How To Let Go

Chapter 1: No Words

            The night that we had the biggest flight of our lives, I drove him to the LAX airport. Before going into the gate, he turned to me.

            “You can still be mad at me if you want to. I don’t mind, Natalie.” He approached me and wrapped his arms around me. The last time he had done so was when he came to me and told me that Carrie was filing for a divorce and that he had found bloodied blades in Eliza’s drawers.

            I didn’t hug him back.

            “Honey, why don’t you come visit next Monday?” he whispered.

            “…I don’t know…” I answered. I never gave him such a vague answer.

            He was quiet. “…Okay. I understand.” He let go and began going towards the gate. He turned back and smiled warmly at me. “Honey, I’ll see you again.” He waved at me.

            I waved back. That was the last time I ever did.

            The phone rang early Wednesday morning. It had been two days since I last said goodbye to Jimmy.

            I answered it, groggily. I had pulled an all-nighter and this huge migraine was slowly coming into play.

            It was Eliza. Her voice was shaky and as quiet as a mouse when she said ‘hello’. I knew instantly that something was wrong.

            “What’s up, Sweetie?” I asked.

            “…Natalie,” she whispered. “…D-dad’s…d-dad’s passed away…”

            At first, I blinked. Moments passed by after I hung up. An eerie silence had crept through me and controlled every cell of my being. My body didn’t move. Everything was quiet.

            Jimmy…Dead? No, it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be gone. How could he be?

            I slowly set off for the bathroom. I soaked in my tub. After fifteen minutes later, it slowly registered in my mind. Jimmy. Dead. Gone. Forever.

            In my tub, my tears mixed in with the tub water. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I wanted to groan, wanted to scream, but my vocal chords constricted and no sound came out. Only tears.

            How could I explain that moment? It was a kaleidoscope of fear, sadness, terror, hurt, pain, and above all, realization. He was gone. He was never going to come back. Someone had punched me in the gut and I was out of breath.

            In my mind, the thoughts continued to race. Never again was he going to walk with me to the bookstore to spend hours of nothingness but looking for a good book. Never again were we going to go the coffee shop and stare at random strangers that walked by. Never again were we ever going to talk.

            He was supposed to be immortal; he was supposed to make the longest toast at my wedding, supposed to see and hold my babies, supposed to be there for me. He was supposed to live.

            And now, he was gone.

            I slept on the couch, the spot where he slept at every time he came over. His covers still smelled like him: Calvin Klein cologne and lavender soap. Every time that I tried to fall asleep, another memory of him came to me with just one whiff of the covers.

            The phone rang countless times. I couldn’t find the effort to raise my body up and answer it. If I did, though, I still don’t know if I had the will to continue the conversation with whoever was on the line.

            I don’t know for how many hours I slept, after finally sleeping. I think there was also a knock on the door. I didn’t care anymore.

            Each time my eyes opened, tears would line them in seconds. I couldn’t find the will to wail; I couldn’t find the will to make a sound. I felt as if that sound would be responded; responded by Jimmy.

            A week passed by without my noticing. Empty cans of all of Jimmy’s favorites laid next to my body; empty words in empty books that were embraced by Jimmy laid on my stomach; empty dreams and empty hopes of Jimmy’s and mine bled from my heart.

            And all I could hear were his very last words to me: “Honey, I’ll see you again.”

            I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t let go. How could I? To let go of Jimmy was to let go of the very essence of my life. It would kill me to let him go. No one understood how I felt.

            And, how could they? Have they spent twenty-four years with Jimmy? A hundred thousand days with him? A million hours? A century of minutes? An eternity of significant seconds? No; no one, not even our parents have spent that long of a life with him…It was all of mine. Those twenty-four years, that hundred thousand days, those millions of hours, that century of minutes, that eternity of seconds. All of that belonged to me. All of that was for me…Me and him; it was for no one else.

            And, when I realize that, I can only end up crying, once again.

How To Let Go

(this is a random title...)

Chapter 0: How It Happened

            It’s been three years since I last spoke with my brother; two years since I last saw his family; a year since I decided to let him go.

            That night, after he said goodbye to me at the airport, I didn’t know what he had been going through.

            I knew of the divorce that had been filed by Carrie. I knew that his daughter—Eliza—was upset with both of her parents. She was the exact image of me when I learned that my parents were going their separate ways.

            What I didn’t know, though, was that he didn’t want me to see it all. He didn’t want me to be burdened, because he was the loving brother that I have had ever since the day I was conceived.

            Jimmy was seven years my senior. He was an average American boy, with his black hair and his brown eyes and his love for football and baseball. He wasn’t tall; wasn’t short. He was the ideal image.

            And, I loved him since the day I opened my eyes. He was the closest thing I had when I had nothing; the greatest thing I had when I had everything.

            Everyday, he showered me with his brotherly love. I don’t know what compelled him to do so; all of my friends that time said their brothers were the most horrible creatures in the world.

            My mother—Elizabeth—said that when Jimmy found out that I was going to be born, he didn’t stop talking about me. Everyday, he came to wrap his scrawny arms around my mother’s expanding womb. She told me that he would whisper, “I love you, little sister” everyday as he kissed her womb.

            He was there when my mother felt my first kicks. He was there when my mother was giving birth to me.

            It wasn’t just my mother who noticed this surpassing love in my brother; my other relatives and family friends saw it as well.

            My father said that Jimmy saved up his money to buy the toys and some of the diapers that would soon be mine. He helped my grandmother choose my clothes and he helped my aunt choose my Sunday clothes.

            My parents told me that they thought that no one could be happier than Jimmy on the day that I was born.

            Half the time while I was learning, Jimmy devoted much of his time in teaching me the things I needed to use: writing, reading, walking, and talking.

            Everyone convinced themselves that no one was closer to each other than me and Jimmy.

            When I was seven, my mother and father suddenly decided to split. Jimmy was there to comfort himself; to make himself stronger for me. I never saw him shed a tear when he was with me.

            He held me and let me cry until I was fast asleep.

            We moved with our dad—James—into a better place at least a hundred miles away from my mother.

            Though Jimmy continued his high school life, he never stopped playing with me. When he went to college, he came home almost every day to see how I was doing.

            Somewhere along the line, I caught him writing in this big journal that my grandmother had given him many years ago. When I asked him about it, he smiled and offered a more interesting game of basketball.

            It isn’t until now that I regret not asking him why he wrote in it.

            Life quickened. He married, I finished college. We lived hundred of miles away, he living in North Carolina, and I living in California.

            But, we frequently saw each other. And, in frequently seeing each other, I began to rebel against him.

            I was going through a phase in life that I questioned my being. I hadn’t thought about this when I was a teenager with my raging hormones. It was now--as an adult--that I questioned.

            My boyfriend dumped me after a relationship that had lasted nearly ten years. My mother was getting remarried to the father of my ex. I knew I was going to get laid off by my boss. My dog died.

            Jimmy didn’t comfort me. He was tired, as well, he admitted. His adolescent daughter was going through the same phase, his wife was arguing with him more frequently, and the worst part was that he didn’t have the patience he had when he was a teenager.

            We bickered. We spat. We hated. Or, at least, I hated. I hated that he was going to leave and go back to his family. I hated that he wasn’t going to think about me anymore. I hated that I wasn’t his number one.

            I was selfish.

New Story: without a title...(In commemeration of 100 or so Days after the death of my uncle)

i've decided to make another story, in commemoration of my uncle's death. the story is an exaggeration of how I'm going through his death, but the basic storyline is a reflection of what's going on in me.
being an only child, my uncle was the one who took care of me, though not to the extent of what Jimmy does for Nathalie in the story. Yeah, he (my uncle) was kinda a brother to me, that's why Jimmy is Nathalie's brother.
Yes, I admit that some of the events of the story may seem over exaggerated for a death,  but alot of it is what I really felt for the death of my uncle.
The true parts of the story that I actually admit to happening was the screams that didnt come out or when my uncle said that he would see me later. 
I just hope that my uncle had left something for me just as Jimmy has left something for Nathalie...
The story starts on the next post