At first, your memories consumed me. They held me tightly. So tightly that sometimes I couldn’t breathe without wailing. I would flinch in pain when they were around me. I would close my eyes and I would see the tubes in your chest, the unnatural bright lights of the ICU, the IVs in your arms, my hand in your hair. I would close my eyes and that would be in my mind on a loop. Your memories shrouded in the silence that was so vast and absolute. You lying there. So familiar but so unrecognizable still. Our other brother encouraging me to talk to you, suggesting that maybe you could still hear me somehow. But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. The memory of not being able to. Not being able to. Not being able to.
As the months went on, your memories left me alone a bit. Sometimes they would leak into my dreams and it would be the worst kind of pain. Worse than the other kind. Like you were still so present in my mind that you had to fight your way out in my sleep. And there, in my sleep, I would talk to you and say all the things I couldn’t say before. Or worse, I would save you. We were playing a game with each other, your memories and I. One where I would think that I had won right before waking up but instead, the entire thing would become a reality once more. One that I had no chance of escaping.
Now it has been years and the pain has not softened. Your memories leave me alone more and more and more and more. When will I completely lose you? It is my greatest fear. When will I not be able to remember what you sounded like? I can’t breathe at the thought. When will I not be able to know how you would have felt about something? When will I give up the silly notion that you might be watching me somehow? When will I stop wondering if you would be proud of me? When will I completely accept that I will never see you again. Never. Never. Not ever again. I can’t and I won’t and I refuse to and it keeps you here with me, in the only ways I have left.