That week was the hardest. The devastation scars me for life. Things are never truly gone when they are gone. Then...BAM...it hits, and they actually become gone...


As I browsed the bitter cold isle of Wal-Mart, I received an outrageously horrible text. It was so unreal like a distant dream waiting to be unleashed. I called her boyfriend not believing what I heard. “It can’t be true,” I kept telling myself. It’s some stupid, cruel joke. The stutter of a shaken voice turns into a sensitive yet violent sob telling me it’s true and what exactly happened. I rushed into the checkout line and arrived home in a great haste.

I waited at home anxiously for four hours in utter shock and running the moment that I found out through my head over and over. The phone rings and it’s her. “Please come see me,” she says. 12:00 a.m. on Monday, a school night, and I’m walking down the street. Five people there to support and a sixth one in need. Five people letting the water dabbed with salt flow from their worn eyes like the spout of a squeezed water bottle. But my eyes stayed dry and my arms opened wide. I have to be strong for them...for her. With my vulnerability intacted, I soothed and lightened the mood. Everyday I walked there to love and support, to joke and to tear up, to remember a loved one... Everything was simply as real as unicorns but not that nice. It was as nice as the torturous depths and jagged rocks of hell. Then, that Wednesday it hit. Waves crashed upon my beach turning into a violent hurricane. My body shivered and shook with no control. My mind was racing, not knowing how to grasp control. My hand repeatedly shredded a foam board with scissors. Anger and sorrow collide becoming intertwined. The deeper I got engulfed the more it seemed real. Something frightening and indescribable then happened. My body just collapsed. My weak, limp body crashed upon the floor. My vulnerability shattered; it broken into pugnacious, thin slivers. My heart took long hiatus’ in between beats. Then, it beat rapidly and skipped any beat it could. My breathing stopped. “I can’t breathe,” I think, “I can’t do this”. My sulky sobs filled my throat until all I could breathe was tears.

He shouldn’t be gone. That stupid van caused it all. One fun beach trip with grandparents and their grandchildren turned into four dead and one to blame himself. His coffin was the size of a school desk. As I sit here with tears slowly rolling down my cheek, dripping off my chin like a slightly turned on faucet, I remorse and remember. My tear stained cheek explains my drenched shirt. My stomach drops and becomes weak as I re-read this. I miss the little brother that I never had. I have not been in that house since he passed, and frankly I don’t care to go in there. So, on September 3, 2007 he was taken away, and here I sit on April 9, 2008 writing this just two days before he would have turned four. Landon...I love you