20 Years Gone

 There's a funny thing about time...

20 years ago, my little brother was killed on a street in Baltimore, MD. 20 years. How the fuck has it been that long?

Time erodes memories of faces but the emotions you feel most intensely, the extreme feelings you experience? Those motherfuckers get seared into your brain in a way you never forget. 

If I took the time to do some research, I bet I'd learn that the whole never-forgetting-intense-feelings thing is a defensive mechanism developed over eons of evolution to help us remember negative feelings and avoid potentially painful situations. Or something like that. I dunno. I haven't seen it explained on a meme and if it's not on a meme, it's not really worth knowing, is it? Anyway, the faces have faded quite a bit but the shock, disbelief and helplessness are every bit as vivid in my memory as the very moment I first experienced them. 

Something else I remember from that day is the conversation I had with my mom. It was short and went like this:

Me: Computing Solutions, this is Adam.

Mom: Adam, you have to come home.

(Something definitely didn't sound right.)

Me: What's going on?

Mom: Something's happened to Scott.

Me: What happened? Is he ok?

(brief pause)

Mom: He's dead.

The rest of that day blurs together. I know I made it home faster than I'd ever driven the three-plus hours between the University of Utah and home before. Short of that, I don't remember any details.

Time. It makes everything run together and fuzzes out the little specific details of your life. Even the important details. These days, I barely remember what my brother looks like anymore. But there's no fucking way I'll ever forget the feelings I went through that day and in the subsequent months.

Things I've learned...

In the years since he's been gone, I've learned a metric fuck-ton of shit. Some of it is important, some of it is just nice stuff to know. It's a major bum-out that I never got to talk to him about this shit, share my life lessons. I wish we could've shared new bands we discovered over the years or talk about movies. Hell, I'd trade all the days I have left in life for just one more chance to shoot the shit with him. 

But he's off wherever he is now doing whatever he's doing now. So I'll drop some highlights. Maybe he'll see these. 

• You ignore the warning klaxons and red flags surround people you get to know at your own peril. Better to suffer the pain of excising them from your life than to let them damage you over and over over the whole course of your life.
• If you don't exercise your ability to read film subtitles often, you'll lose that ability. Then, watching martial arts movies becomes a real bitch.
• I am a sleepy drunk. Apparently.
• There are few things as damaging as pretending to be something you're not to be part of a group that doesn't want anything to do with the real version of yourself.
• Friendship is a two-way street and it's ok for you to discard relationships where it feels like you're the only one who's trying to keep it working.
• You are not obligated to keep someone in your life that stresses you out or throws you out of balance even a little bit.
• Three years old is the perfect age to introduce kids to Star Wars.
• Cats are the greatest of antidepressants.
• You can only control what you can control. Trying to control everything will just break your brain.
• There are few things that you can't endure with the proper application of loud metal music and long drives through the country.
• People who want you in their lives will make an effort to include you. They are the only people worth keeping around.

What sucks the most...

There so many things I wish my brother could have been here to see, experiences I wish he could've participated in. How much fun would it have been to go to concerts together? That would have been so fucking rad!!

I know he got to meet his oldest nephew but he missed out on his other nieces and nephews. He didn't get to see them grow up, start getting married and having kids of their own. He never got to meet his great-niece and nephew. They're such amazing little humans. He would've loved them.

And that's what sucks the most. Knowing that he should be here to see all this amazing shit and he can't be. Knowing that there have been so many opportunities to bond and form forever memories and we couldn't. Knowing that the only place he exists in any real way is in my memory.

Knowing that my brother is a slowly-eroding memory that may cease to exist, except for the feelings he inspired. That's what sucks the most.

But time doesn't stop for anyone and even though losing my brother did kind of freeze me emotionally and I stopped maturing. And the one thing I can do to honor his memory is live my best life. It's way past time for me to get started on that and I can't bear the thought of wasting another 20 years.

I miss you, Pookie. I hope you're doing amazing wherever you are and I hope we meet again someplace down the road.