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I can’t…
Pain and sorrow and the heaviest sense of failure collapse on top of me.
I didn’t get to her.
I didn’t save her.
Mom’s wails continue to curl through the house.
My face feels contorted.
My mouth is open but no sound comes out.
Freya.
My baby sister.
She’s gone.
She’s never coming home.
* * *
Today wasmy sister’s funeral. And it killed my parents.
It killed a part of me too.
Standing here, alone under the glow of the moon, next to Freya’s freshly filled grave, I know I’ll never be the same.
I’ll never be the man I planned to be.
I’m going to end up as someone else.
Someone darker.
* * *
Two months later,I stand in the same spot and stare down at my mother’s grave, buried next to her daughter.
Dad stands at my side, coughing between silent sobs.
After Freya’s body was found in Vegas, abused and discarded, her cause of death labeled as a drug overdose, Mom gave up.
The doctors said it was pneumonia, and maybe it was, but she’d lost her will to live.
The reality of what happened to Freya, how she suffered her last weeks, days, hours… it was too much.
My dad is sick too. I can hear him struggling to breathe at night when I’m walking through the empty halls of our house.
He’s not going to get treated. I don’t have to ask him to know that he won’t.
And standing here, again, looking down at the women who meant the world to both of us, I don’t blame him.
I don’t take it personally that I’m not enough to keep him here.
A rare raindrop lands on the dirt.
I’m not sure I want to stay in this world either.
