11 years ago, my big brother went to heaven. He was 19. I was a year younger.
Grief strikes you and throws your whole life in the air haphazardly. Time will eventually dull the pain. Soon, pieces of your life slowly settle back to where it once was. But a little nudge, a little inconspicuous moment you would not have seen coming from miles and miles away, is all it takes to let all the pain back in.
One nudge, and I am 18 again, holding as much of his hand as I can without tripping the tubes coming out of it. And then I'm back in highschool, delivering love letters for him. And then I am six, sharing ice cream, playing with lego blocks, playing in the rain, poking termite hills with sticks, filling our bellies with soda. Mom trouble. Class cards trouble. Girl trouble. I remember everything. All the petty fights, who uses the phone first, and why am I always the last to play with the Nintendo?
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| My Kuya Nikos in the middle, his hand is over my shoulder. My younger brother is on the right. |
Kuya, you once pushed me on the bike. On purpose. I got a huge scar on my knee for it. That was 20 years ago. The scar is still there, but looking at it, I am reminded just how long it really has been, and just how much I really miss you.
I am sad. I feel robbed of the million other memories I should be having with you. Robbed of the present and the future we could have together. My dumplings will never learn how much your singing voice sucks. I'll never get to laugh at you when baldness starts claiming your pristine hairline. I feel cheated.
"She held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean & when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor & she wiped at it quickly with her foot & pretended no one had seen." - source here
It's been 11 years. This time, the "nudge" came from a broken china. The one you knocked over with a ball that we had to put together. Our mother's face when she came home was the maddest I've ever seen. But then after you left us, that sloppily-smeared epoxy over the cracks of that broken china fill us with nostalgia when things were still simple. It's broken again, hence the meltdown. I guess even the strongest glue eventually bows its head to time and weathering. I had it pulled out from the garbage so i can try to piece it back together. I'll use a stronger epoxy this time.
