Losing Battle

Some days you wake up from a dream, but you don't know it. You feel like something has happened to you and you can not shake that feeling. In the pit of your stomach there is angst and an inexplicable anxiety. You quake worried that the unspeakable thing that occurred or that you did will result in some penultimate punishment. At some point, however, you run into someone who was key to your crime who seems to know nothing of it. You realize you were dreaming. The feeling of utter freedom, release and peace that comes in those first few seconds of realization are priceless.

What about the days when you wake up and have that same feeling, but never run into that saviour? The days when it is the reality that someone you loved as a part of your soul, mind, being will never be in your company again. Those days when you know that the last time you will ever see their face, it will be shrouded in a mask of death. The moment when you remember the last time you saw them walking, talking, breathing, eating a double cheese burger, chicken fingers, jalapeno poppers and swigging on a Coke while playing pool with you -- would always be the last time.

My baby brother is gone from this world. His first child is expected within weeks and they will never meet. I am left here without him fearing that I never knew him well enough as a man to let his son or daughter know how very special he was. I want to know how the last seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months of his life were spent in exacting detail. I want to know he never suffered insurmountable pain and that he was not alone when he left. Somehow I think these details will bring me closer to him although he is gone.

I really really want to know if he ever knew how much I loved him.