And You Leave

I pull up Google.  Type in "Jordan Lee Isenhour."  I see the search results.  The pictures of his face from the obit.  Trying to convince myself this is real, I let a tear or two fall out of my left eye.  But then they stop falling.  There is some wall--a dam that holds them back until they create real pressure behind my eyeballs, and my nose, and forehead.  My throat burns--with that frustration and anger at something unchangeable.  Is this denial?  It feels like it.  But then someone in denial can't know what denial feels like. 

This is shock. 

Feeling lost, I put a "tear-jerker" on Spotify.  Today it is "Cathedrals" by Jump the Little Children.  I don't even know what the words mean.  But that doesn't matter.

At least fingers can type words when tears won't flow.

This isn't much.  But in a way it's more than enough.

You know that grief that makes your body feel defeat?  Yeah, that kind.  It weighs down the whole person.

I miss you. 

For a while I thought I would be ok.  I thought I was ready to still hurt every now and then, but that I could go on with a level of normal.

How stupid.

I'm not normal. 

Where are you right now?  What are you doing?  Please come over so we can watch dumb TV shows.  You were supposed to come visit me.  Before Brooke.  Before we moved.  We were going to go to the beach and sit on towel and talk.  And I was going to take you to get a blue coconut raspa from that Mexican restaurant that only takes cash. 

This isn't like a break-up.  This isn't like when a best friend moves away.  It isn't like being ill in a crippling way.

This is like a soul painted in a coat of tar.

This doesn't make sense any more.

But I miss you.  That's all that comes out.  And tonight I don't want to go to bed.  I will lie awake in the dark feeling haunted by your memory.

Somehow I knew that you would cause me some kind of impossible pain.

You did.

I forgive you, I think.

The only real solution: come back.

Close my eyes and place a small flower on your grave.  Sit down on the grassy caved-in earth.  Fall over and take a nap there.

Goodnight, brother.