What do you mean he’s gone?  Gone where? How? What are you talking about? My brother’s death is unfathomable. I hear his voice saying he’s unable to come to the phone right now when I call his cell and I want to leave a message asking him what the hell happened? Why are they saying that you died playing basketball? Because only he can explain it to me.  The doctor says that he had an enlarged heart, which is a symptom of some underlying issue.  Maybe it was his high blood pressure, maybe it was an arrhythmia he was born with, like me, or maybe it was something else.  Could it have been prevented somehow? Was he taking blood pressure medication? How did he feel that day?  Nothing has been explained to my satisfaction so I’m left trying to put all the pieces together like a detective.  And I feel so guilty for not calling him in such a long time.  I figured he’d be there whenever I got around to it. I thought we had more time.

The fact is, there’s never enough time and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re always going to feel like we were blindsided, like the rug was abruptly snatched from beneath us, and that we took the lives of our loved ones for granted. It will never be that we are satisfied with our last interaction with someone we’ve loved and lost, no matter if it was months ago or the very day that they passed away. We’ll have regrets no matter what.  We’ll feel like we didn’t get to say all that needed to be said, do all that needed to be done.  Even if I had called him on Sunday, the day before he went to play basketball, I would have felt robbed by the end of Monday, when he passed on.  There's never enough time when you love someone.

I couldn’t sleep last night, the second night of his passing, because I realized that back in March I’d accidentally deleted the only set of pictures of him and I together.  I’ve been searching my computer for them in vain ever since. I’m still hopeful that maybe they were saved onto a thumb drive that I just need to find.  I’m so sad.  Those pictures mean so much to me.  I was so proud whenever I mentioned him, “my brother.”  And he made me feel every bit of a little sister, loved and protected.  I was so elated when we spoke for the very first time 7 years ago.  Darryl is my half brother, 5 years older than me, and although we knew the other existed – me since I was 12, and him since he was 16 –  no one had bothered to help us find one another until 2005.  And in that short time it was as though we’d been together our entire lives. We talked often but never often enough for his liking.  We even resembled each other.  And when I visited St. Louis in 2008, I got to spend some time with my older brother and meet two of my three nephews.  We’d only just begun and now he’s no more.  I feel like part of my soul is hollow.  The first night I hadn't processed it fully. I still haven't, actually. But that first night I fell asleep at 11pm and woke up crying at 2am.  I had a headache for 2 days after that and, on this third day, I am finally beginning to accept that he is gone. Although now I'm trying my hardest to hold on to any and every memory that I have left of him. I go to his facebook page and read his past comments and see our "friendship" and it fills me up a bit, it helps me get on knowing that he never really left. Those times we had, the laughs, the heart to hearts, his memories will be with me always. And it brings me great solace to know that he was happy that day, he'd come to a great place in his life, found a wonderful person to share it with, and all four of his children were happy with him.
I'll miss you, big brother. I'm so grateful for the time we had. It couldn't have been long enough. xxoo