Running from Feat

I remember the day I started to hate myself again. As much as I try to forget it, its imprinted in my memory so vividly sometimes when I close my eyes I see them there. Cold and stiff, I’ll never forget those feet. I thought I would be strong enough to walk into that bedroom and see for myself while desperately focusing my concentration on my only thought, “Don’t you dare fuckin leave me.” But I had only got as far as his feet. Seeing them stopped my own feet dead in their tracks, much like the lifeless feet peeking out from underneath the whitest sheet I had ever seen. I knew it, that was all I had to see, his dead lifeless feet. Up until that very moment I had clung on to the thought that maybe just maybe they were all wrong, maybe if he heard my voice he would wake up. The moment I seen those feet though I knew the feet that would follow me everywhere when we were kids and alongside me as adults, the very feet that use to make me angry and drive me crazy mostly because they were always one step behind me, would now no longer be able to follow me. Ironically the feet that would drive me crazy following me everywhere would now drive me crazy because no matter what, no matter how much I cried, NO and refused to believe my baby brothers life here on earth was complete that they would no longer follow me the way they once would. His feet now made me angry because they would no more. That day brings so much misery, regret and anger to my heart, a pain that allowed me to make excuses, allowed me to abuse toxic substances that would evict my spirit from its very home within my soul to stifle feeling the pain, reliving the memories…seeing those feet and thinking about how I could break one of the most sacred promises I made to myself. That I would not contribute to the death of another one of my best friends. My brothers.

I ran, I gathered what little energy I had and I ran. I got to the vehicle and I screamed. To say I was crushed would due those painful feelings no justice. I couldn’t breathe, I was gasping for air but with every gasp was this stabbing pain to my heart, literally a physical pain. I wanted to die. I was angry, shocked, disturbed. My last contact with him just hours before ran over and over through my thoughts with the vision of his cold grey feet, beneath that eerily vibrant bright white sheet, if Crayola were ever able to capture that shade of grey on his feet I’m sure they would call it lifeless and that sheet, brightest life. Good thing Crayola isn’t in the business of depicting the dark side of life or lack thereof. Twisted, I know, but that is precisely how vivid that image is when I closed my eyes. I kept asking myself, what didn’t I see? What didn’t I hear? Where were the signs? Every part of it I dissected. Was he trying to tell me something? why didn’t I sense something? Is this real? what did I miss? How could this all be happening again.

The first time this happened it was as bitterly cold as this day. A piercing cold that burned the skin and immediately froze the tears welling in my eyes. Another thing that I remember so vividly about those two horrendous days. The cold. A cold that I fear not because of the natural effect and shock that cold air has on your skin, but it’s the fear of the pain, the reminder of the loss and the guilt I associate with their deaths, as well as my own, the loss of the person I was right before hearing those agonizing words. “Your brother is dead.”

The first time I heard those words was on December 3, 2006. That day I paced back and forth in front of the big window in my living room that faced the bus stop. It would be there that I had seen him many times before walking from, walking towards my building, a small one-bedroom basement apartment, where I lived with my then 3-year-old daughter. There was a little park just outside the window where he would take his niece every time he arrived for a visit. She loved her uncle fiercely. I think she thought she owned him how much she loved him. It was always a site to see the excitement that would immediately burst upon her face when her uncle would arrive. That day was different though, I paced and paced but no matter how many times I would peer out the window looking for him he wasn’t there.

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