ControlDaddy
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2021
- Messages
- 1,192
Happy birthday, little brother.
I remember holding you for the first time so vividly. Even in a memory I am told is abnormally vivid, it stands out from my normal memories as few others do. I don't know why I thought to tilt my head down and kiss the top of your soft infant skull. Even though I cannot say the scent of it was like this or like that, and I cannot explain how it implanted the subliminal message it did, I knew I would be devoted to you for the rest of my life. I took for granted my death would occur before yours, and a decade in a half after you , I still struggle without that role as my trimtab.
Your infant skull, with a scent meant to secure a mother and father for you which failed, was delicate then with soft spots, fontanelles. Twenty one years later, it was still too fragile to withstand the rage you had towards yourself. A single .32 caliber bullet, smaller than my smallest finger, turned your head into a brief explosion as if it were nothing, and then it really was nothing at all ever again.
I was six and a half, and according to our mother's meticulous record keeping, I was all of forty three pounds and 43 inches tall when you were six and a half pounds and 19 inches. You should have been a bit of effort to hold up, but I never remember you feeling that way. The family albums, which as a middle child you statistically should be underrepresented in, when they do show pictures of you you are almost always with me. I am usually holding you and your diaper bag or pushing your stroller, or as you grew up standing next to you, often with a hand on your shoulder, trying to give you that sense of touch that I knew you were always starving for.
In the brief period after that grisly botch and your suicide, when I was campaigning for you to accept a cease fire of any kind, you revealed much about as you rationalized the need for total war. This was very hard for me to hear, and it is still very hard on me now to accept you always felt the things you said you did. You said you felt guilty for not loving me the way I did you, and I wish you didn't think it had to be an equivalency. You also said I never smiled like I did in our childhood, and that after becoming guardian to you I was always serious and taciturn and sober towards you. I see that to be somewhat true in the photographic records, and I can see how the worries and concerns I had for you, which to anyone else I am sure I could have completely concealed, may have been unmistakable to you.
You were a hard ward to attend to, especially in the ways most important to me to attend to for you. I stand up for myself, saying I always did the very best I could for you. I still do.
Since it is your birthday anniversary today, I will reminisce once more about one of yours. You were turning fourteen, and the birthdays that had come before were so much easier than what was to come. I was going to call every one of the phone numbers I had for people you had spent time after school with, but realized that might be folly and asked you who you wanted me to invite. You gave me four names, and I was surprised when you didn't mention our last roommate, who adored you and I thought you were good friends with. So I asked you if you wanted him to come. You said yes, and any of the other people we hung out with should be invited as well. I felt good, inviting so many people after all, and thought you would to. You said all you wanted that year was beer for you and your friends, so hell, I bought two pony kegs, and dispensed with the other things I would have like to give you to respect that. Except for a black cake and black balloons, which seemed to be within bounds of acceptability, especially for an OG emo kid.
You never explained to me why you left your friends and the party to be alone, so I let you for awhile, but as the party wrapped up I went to find you. I followed a trail through the woods I would use to find a place to be alone, and I was getting frantic as I ran out of trail and woods and approached a highway. I saw you about one hundred feet away, laying on your back staring up at the sky, and as I got closer saw you were bawling your eyes out. You couldn't stop yourself, and I physically dragged you up to your feet eventually. Then, with my arm around you walked you back to the house. You couldn't say anything to anyone and went to lay in your bed. I shut the party down, apologized for you, and tried to go to sleep myself. It was a very hard day. It was always hard to accept that you were so alone, no matter how close I stood next to you.
I do miss you, but cannot celebrate with you today. I will, drink a bit and feel melancholy, as was your way and the closest to celebrating you I can do. I am sorry, and I wish you had survived to be here right now.
With our sister, I think you were eight years old at the time.
In Olympia, also your favorite beer at the time.
With Grandma, who you also died before, and who couldn't talk about it with me.
I remember holding you for the first time so vividly. Even in a memory I am told is abnormally vivid, it stands out from my normal memories as few others do. I don't know why I thought to tilt my head down and kiss the top of your soft infant skull. Even though I cannot say the scent of it was like this or like that, and I cannot explain how it implanted the subliminal message it did, I knew I would be devoted to you for the rest of my life. I took for granted my death would occur before yours, and a decade in a half after you , I still struggle without that role as my trimtab.
Your infant skull, with a scent meant to secure a mother and father for you which failed, was delicate then with soft spots, fontanelles. Twenty one years later, it was still too fragile to withstand the rage you had towards yourself. A single .32 caliber bullet, smaller than my smallest finger, turned your head into a brief explosion as if it were nothing, and then it really was nothing at all ever again.
I was six and a half, and according to our mother's meticulous record keeping, I was all of forty three pounds and 43 inches tall when you were six and a half pounds and 19 inches. You should have been a bit of effort to hold up, but I never remember you feeling that way. The family albums, which as a middle child you statistically should be underrepresented in, when they do show pictures of you you are almost always with me. I am usually holding you and your diaper bag or pushing your stroller, or as you grew up standing next to you, often with a hand on your shoulder, trying to give you that sense of touch that I knew you were always starving for.
In the brief period after that grisly botch and your suicide, when I was campaigning for you to accept a cease fire of any kind, you revealed much about as you rationalized the need for total war. This was very hard for me to hear, and it is still very hard on me now to accept you always felt the things you said you did. You said you felt guilty for not loving me the way I did you, and I wish you didn't think it had to be an equivalency. You also said I never smiled like I did in our childhood, and that after becoming guardian to you I was always serious and taciturn and sober towards you. I see that to be somewhat true in the photographic records, and I can see how the worries and concerns I had for you, which to anyone else I am sure I could have completely concealed, may have been unmistakable to you.
You were a hard ward to attend to, especially in the ways most important to me to attend to for you. I stand up for myself, saying I always did the very best I could for you. I still do.
Since it is your birthday anniversary today, I will reminisce once more about one of yours. You were turning fourteen, and the birthdays that had come before were so much easier than what was to come. I was going to call every one of the phone numbers I had for people you had spent time after school with, but realized that might be folly and asked you who you wanted me to invite. You gave me four names, and I was surprised when you didn't mention our last roommate, who adored you and I thought you were good friends with. So I asked you if you wanted him to come. You said yes, and any of the other people we hung out with should be invited as well. I felt good, inviting so many people after all, and thought you would to. You said all you wanted that year was beer for you and your friends, so hell, I bought two pony kegs, and dispensed with the other things I would have like to give you to respect that. Except for a black cake and black balloons, which seemed to be within bounds of acceptability, especially for an OG emo kid.
You never explained to me why you left your friends and the party to be alone, so I let you for awhile, but as the party wrapped up I went to find you. I followed a trail through the woods I would use to find a place to be alone, and I was getting frantic as I ran out of trail and woods and approached a highway. I saw you about one hundred feet away, laying on your back staring up at the sky, and as I got closer saw you were bawling your eyes out. You couldn't stop yourself, and I physically dragged you up to your feet eventually. Then, with my arm around you walked you back to the house. You couldn't say anything to anyone and went to lay in your bed. I shut the party down, apologized for you, and tried to go to sleep myself. It was a very hard day. It was always hard to accept that you were so alone, no matter how close I stood next to you.
I do miss you, but cannot celebrate with you today. I will, drink a bit and feel melancholy, as was your way and the closest to celebrating you I can do. I am sorry, and I wish you had survived to be here right now.
With our sister, I think you were eight years old at the time.
In Olympia, also your favorite beer at the time.
With Grandma, who you also died before, and who couldn't talk about it with me.
Beautifully written