frozen.

we walked into the room. strewn upon a very impersonal stainless steel surgical table were the remnants of what was once their son. he was in one piece, just cast aside like an insignificant candy wrapper in a dumpster of candy wrappers.

"yes...", mama said..
"yes, thats him."

we were stricken with a sudden fit of silence. this wasnt the way it was supposed to be. he couldnt have just been gone. my brother? the one who would stay up until 3am playing super mario world when we were younger? the one who could always make me laugh? the one who taught me everything i know about baseball and music and diving? no. couldnt be. must have the wrong guy, fellas. my brother is the kind of guy to die in a war saving an entire platoon of fellow GIs by tossing himself on a grenade. or saving a dog from a burning veterinary hospital. not by freezing to death in a cold prairie city. alone.

it saddened us to see. not even in the sense that it was the direct phyisical manifestation of what i had already presumed to be a dead brother, but if it was anybody, it would still be sad. pathetic, is more the word. we glared at that body with such a grey contempt for the empty soul that it once effortlessly contained, it seemed as though we were random medical students examining their first cadaver. there was nothing familiar i saw in the fleshy vacancy on the table. what a specimen it was...

six foot five. one hundred seventy-five pounds. nearly impeccable dental alignment. blue eyes. dressed in old, tattered sweat pants and sweat shirt. his hand showed the scar and its covered decoration. his shoes were vans. size 11.5. black. just how he wore them since age 15. they were relatively new, he always had to have a fresh pair of black authentics. in a small pile of what little belongings he owned and had on him at the time of his death, i saw a keychain i gave him two christmases ago. calvin and hobbes hugging each other. his girlfriend at the time hated it. said it was too juvenile for an adult to have on a keychain. she hated everything. even the keychain itself. i bet she even hated keys too. she wasnt very nice.

we all knew it was a bad idea to leave. we couldnt tell him though. the face that was long adjourned of a smile and warmth was too full to deplete. as time goes on, the love and warmth in my older brothers face became vacant, leaving wrinkles that were once filled and overflowing with radiance. that was the face we saw here now. in examination room number 13. in lansing, michigan. on march 11th, 2008. he was only 19. but he had the mind, face, and experience of any salty 47 year old sailor in a maritime bar.

he loved the sea. once, when he was six years old, him and daddy went out to catalina island on a daytrip from our home in L.A. and rented a 12 foot schooner. they set course for the bay, and set the barge as their target. the winds were strong that day. on the way back from the barge, the winds shifted. the ten foot sheet automatically tacked back to the east without any will or desire, making the small sailboat lean away from the wind, lean towards my brother and my daddy sitting on a side of the boat. they tipped. then the oncoming wave capsized them and they were trapped underwater for a good thirty seconds. suspended by gravity. bound by rope. daddy put my brother up on the bottom of the boat, which was now belly up to the sky. and then they got rescued by little orange men in little orange inflatable rafts.


he loved the water. and the snow. one time, at big bear mountain when we were realllllyyy little, we all went tubing down the slopes in inflated tire tubes. we struck a ditch, we fell. hard. he giggled with glee and shrieked with laughter. he loved the snow. but not the cold. and seeing his cold body on this cold slab of sheet metal sheltered in a cold room protecting him from what was ironically his very cold outdoor death, it brought a curious whimsical smirk to my face.

the electric smirk that creased my lips and pursed my dimples was connected to my brain by a hot telegraph line that rarely ran without stops. the whimsical smirk suddenly turned into a fiery, hateful, demonic, toothy smile. one on the verge of cackling laughter. it was all a sick fucking joke. given so much in life, yet he strived for so little. what a selfish man.

you little cocksucker... you got what you wanted and we have to sit back and take a seat to you once again. life, death... doesnt matter. its always about you. its always about you. you picked up that bottle when that whore left you and you didnt set it down until your lifeless fingers splayed flat and dropped the glass bottle of jack daniels you so expressingly loved. it didnt love you back. she didnt love you back. nobody ever loves you back. youre as cold as the steel you lay on, kiddo. colder than the death you were given. no, earned. you had millions of chances for warmth in a million different places, and you still managed to turn everything cold. im not crying, because i had your funeral in my heart months ago. you died when she left you. you died when you picked up the bottle. you died when you were born. you never had a chance. too loving, yet too smart. wicked combination. you saw the good in everybody and wanted to believe it, but were overwhelmed by the depressing logical reality of it to be a falsety because you were so fucking smart. cursed. with a heart and a mind and only one life.


mom is crying. dad is crying. Jill is crying. SHE is crying. All these tears for you. all of THIS for you. what a waste. you are undeserving of the tears that fall at your side. at the pronunciation of your name. I know this, so i am looking at your face, with hate. i zone out on your temples for a minute, then look back down to see your nose crooked. broken. i realize with no humility at all that i am beating your dead body and that there are 4 people struggling to get me to stop. no end in sight. i want to kill you. i want to exhibit ten seconds of pain on you for the lifetime of pain and guilt you have already begun to display on us and in us. knees in the stomach. digging into refrigerated intestines that are now like dense coiled bales of hay. kicking the hand, chipping the frozen keratin off the dead nails that continue to grow. i am off. i am on the ground. i am breathing. i am calm.

i cry. a silent, profound cry that ascends this ceiling and these ears in my presence. i cry for what was, but mainly i cry for what could have been. astonished open mouths fear my next move, praying i dont take another 180 degree turn of emotions. calm. silent. the cry subsides into a weep. i lean over your bruised, battered, chipped, crooked body. i curse the unfulfilled serenity in your face, yet long for it at the same time. my tears fill the empty vacant wrinkles that time and waves have battered into your face. a stale kiss escapes my soul and finds a temporary home on your forehead. containing stagnant love and dormant hate. goodbye, brother. i wish you wouldnt have always taken the hard way out