Jayce

Jayce

I am empty.

Hollow.

Lost.

There is nothing in this moment.

I'm thankful for that.

The last six days have nearly broken me. Today still might.

I know this moment of emptiness will pass. I know all too soon my eyes will burn and my throat will catch and the waves of grief will come crashing back to drown me.

I don't know how to explain what it's like to lose half of your soul. I don't think anyone can. That's what it feels like I've lost. Half of my soul.

I dream of him at night. Dreams that are gentle and sentimental. Dreams of a lighthearted young boy whose sun-bleached hair shines like gold when it catches the rays of light piercing through the trees as he runs through the forest on one of the few truly warm summer days that exist in this place. Dreams of a slightly too-tall teenager snorting as he tries to laugh quietly enough that our parents won't be able to hear us from their room down the hall as he regales me with a story about his night out with the football team and the way at least half of them caused trouble at the diner after practice yet again. Dreams of a man in his twenties who looks like me as he smiles and sprawls out on my couch to tell me about the new girl he's seeing and how he thinks it might be true love this time.

Then I wake up.

My heart is pounding, and my ragged breath sounds almost deafening in the oppressive darkness. I'm covered in sweat, and for one brief moment, I struggle to remember what could have brought me to this point. Then I lose him all fucking over again.

The people who say grief is just love with nowhere to go are full of shit. Grief is shit. Grief is an endless, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing struggle to remember to breathe. It's looking across the room for a smile you'll never see again or seeing a commercial on TV that has always been an inside joke that now makes you wish you didn't exist. It's skin you'll never touch again. A laugh you'll never hear. It's trips you'll never take, texts you'll never send, best man speeches you'll never write, nieces and nephews you'll never meet. It's growing old without your other half .

It's wishing you'd been the one to go instead.

But he was the one who left. So, I'm stuck here. I'm standing in this godforsaken joke of a room, with its burgundy drapes, soft music, and carpet thick enough to muffle footsteps and whispers as I wait for friends and family to arrive to say goodbye to my brother.

I want to leave this place. I want to run deep into the woods until my lungs burn with exhaustion and I fall to my knees and beg to take his place. I know that no one would be listening were I to ask, and I know that even if anyone were, they wouldn't let me. All I could do is join him. Maybe when this is all over, I will. But right now, I can't. Right now, I have to paint on a solemn, polite, almost smile and hug and shake hands and thank people for coming to apologize for my loss.

I've done this before, but before…I wasn't alone. Before…I had him.

We were only twenty-three when our parents died in a car crash, and we were left with nothing but each other. I never thought that nine years later, I'd be standing in the same room, offering the same bullshit thank yous for the same reason. Only this time, I'm doing it without Jordyn.

For nine years, we only had each other. For the twenty-three before that, we chose only each other. We loved our parents, and we dated, of course, but everyone knew that at the end of the day, our relationship mattered more than any other. That's just how twins are built. We're two peas in a pod, two halves of a whole, joined at the hip. We're inseparable. Or…we were .

I fight against the darkness that threatens to overtake me. It wants to drag me back to where I've been for most of the past six days, back to lying in bed, hoping that the next time I close my eyes, I won't wake up. To tears running in hot trails down my stubbled cheeks. To curling into a ball and crying out until my throat stings and my lungs are on fire. To praying to gods who don't answer me. I want the darkness to take me.

I close my eyes and listen to the sound of my breath, the beat of my heart. My eyes are still closed when I hear the doors open.

I force a pained attempt at a somber half smile on my face - it hurts the muscles I'm trying to use; they aren't built for smiling anymore. I tell myself that I'm okay. This is okay . I'll be okay. Maybe if I say it to myself enough times, I'll start to believe it. I won't, but I say it anyway.

I take the hands of the people who come up to me, cold or sweaty or sticky. I shake them as they speak condolences I barely hear. " So sorry for your loss." "He was taken too soon." "Don't hesitate to reach out if you need help." I nod and thank them for coming and agree that he was too young and tell them I'll certainly contact them if I need any assistance, and they walk away, filing into the next room where a simple cherrywood coffin sits on a dais. They can't even see him. I can't see him. The accident was too bad for that, they said. He didn't suffer, they said. It was painless, they said. Instant. That's what they said. That's what they have to say, isn't it?

The people continue after only a moment beside his box, shifting toward chairs that stand in long rows with an aisle down the center as if this could actually be a wedding. They find others they know. They form small groups, speaking in hushed tones at first, but their grief isn't like mine. They move on from my brother after a minute or two, and their muted tones transform into something just a bit lighter, just a bit harder to tolerate. Subdued laughter breaks through from time to time before they hug and shake hands and settle into the padded metal chairs.

I sit at the front, and I listen as our old priest speaks. I haven't seen him in years, neither had Jordyn, but he speaks anyway. I don't know if he believes we are worth speaking for even though we haven't seen him in years, even though we haven't spoken to his God in years, or if he simply speaks because it's his job, but he does it. Others speak. They tell stories about us in our youth, about how we became good men. They speak about us as if we're gone, even though I'm still here, because we were always US.

We sing a few songs that I don't remember picking, songs that have been sung by many who have found themselves sitting in this room. They've been sung by those who find themselves as lost as I do and those who simply sit on the metal chairs going through the motions because it's the socially acceptable thing to do.

We pray.

They pray.

I'm beyond prayer.

Mr. Johnson, the kind older man who owns this burgundy and gold room and spends his days discussing coffins and flowers and the logistics of cremations and funerals, tells us that the procession for the graveside service will begin shortly, and the people on the chairs stand and file out into the crisp spring air. The crisp spring air would be considered freezing anywhere else, but here, thirty-eight degrees is a nice balmy springtime temperature, despite the fact that every visible surface is still black and grey and white. It will be months still before the green arrives. Before we hear the songbirds. Before life returns.

I ride in the hearse with Mr. Johnson. The drive is short and quiet, and it's strange to think this is the last drive I'll take with my brother. Our last drive won't be speeding our motorcycles along Top of the WorldHighway or out to Prudhoe Bay on the few weekends every summer when temperatures finally reach the mid-sixties. It won't be the 2000-mile trek to Seattle that we embarked on each year just to get away from work and snow and small-town life. It won't be one of us driving the other home from Shelly's Hole-in-the-Wall bar on Main Street after one of the rare occasions the other has had too much to drink. It won't be on a double date where my bisexual companion ends up leaving with my brother's new girlfriend (that only happened once, but still). It's this. It's me sitting in the front of a long black car while he rides in a cherrywood box in the back before being lowered into the frozen ground.

There are more prayers at the cemetery, but not many. Even though it's spring here, it's still grey and snowy, and no one wants to stand outside for longer than is socially required. I've forgotten my coat. I had it this morning, I think. I must have left it in my truck when I arrived at the funeral home with the atrocious burgundy and gold room. I barely notice when my fingers and toes start to go numb. When they begin to tingle, I'm grateful for the distraction. It gives me something to focus on rather than sinking into the darkness that threatens to overwhelm me once again.

Mr. Johnson waits for me since I rode with him. He stands politely to the side with his hands deep in his pockets, his face a mask of practiced sympathy. Maybe it's real. He's done this for so long that I wonder if he can tell the difference. I know he lost his wife a few years before Jordyn and I lost our parents, and I wonder if he felt like he lost half of his soul when it happened. I wonder if that's changed over the course of the last decade, or if he's just learned to hide behind his caring voice and fluid movements and pretend that he's not broken anymore. I wonder if that's who I'll be in ten years. I don't believe I'll stick around long enough to find out. I'm not that strong.

He waits quietly while I stand and stand and stand as the workers wearing plaid flannel shirts and thick canvas coats and leather gloves and beanies with ear flaps wait for me to walk away so they can finish their work and go home. They're getting paid to cover my brother's cherrywood box with earth, but they have places they'd rather be - kids and wives and still-living brothers waiting for them to return home for dinner.

It's silent in the long black car as we drive back to the building with the burgundy room, and I wonder if Mr. Johnson is respecting my grief or if he's lost in memories of his own .

He walks with me through the parking lot with his hand gently resting on the back of my ribs. It feels like the gesture of a father. Did he walk this way with his son when Mrs. Johnson died? Does he feel her loss each time he makes this trek? He walks me to my truck and he tells me he's sorry, and his shoulders slump for the first time today as he leaves my side and makes his way toward the small brick building.

I sit in my truck without turning it on. I sit and stare at nothing. I stare at the way the road grime clings to the ice on the edges of my windshield and the patterns the wipers have tracked across the glass. I stare until my eyes burn and hot streaks of salt track down my cheeks once more. I suck in breath after lung-stinging breath of cold, stale air that has been trapped in my closed-up truck for too long. My throat cinches shut, and my heartbeat stutters; my eyes squeeze close, and I cry. I cry until there is nothing left, until I'm empty once more.