Have you ever known loss. Did you ever say goodbye to someone and not know it would be the last time? Did you ever think that paying your respects to a loved one, now gone, would be the hardest part...only to realize as the days and weeks cascade by how sadly mistaken you were...?

Have you ever realized that you don't remember the sound of his voice? The lingering sound of his laughter...no longer dwells in your heart. His name is not on any of the letters in the mailbox. When sending an e-mail...his contact no longer appears in the type line. His number is still on the A list in my cell phone, I can't bring myself to delete it, but I am almost sure that another's voice would answer if I called...so I don't call anymore.

The talks we had have either faded into nothingness, or become all that I can hear--especially on long sleepless nights like tonight. I don't remember the exact way the colors gathered in his eyes like i used to. The scent of his cologne has faded from all his clothes and everything he left behind. There are no more pictures to be developed that he took.

The hardest part was not the viewing or the funeral, not even the day I was informed that he was dead... there was a numbness then that covered a multiplicity of emotions. A shock that subdued much of the sadness. The truest hard times are those when I know we would be together. His kids birthdays...our brother's wedding...Sunday afternoons for family dinner...the Jazz games...and trips to the lake...those moments when something wonderful happens and I want to pick up the phone and call him...or those nights when with a broken heart I want an older brother to tease me in the way that only a loving/anamostic older brother can to make me feel better, or at least make me angry so I forget what was initally bothering me. These are the moments when my soul throbs, my lungs constrict, my heart dies, my emotions collide and acidic tears silently escape my entombed heart...

The clock moves, yet I fear that to do so is to move on and in someway dishonors his memory, his life, his loss. And even in those moments when fear is not the governing factor, pain has a tight grasp on my recent past and the hurt that comes with each new step seems nearly debilitating...

How can I live in such a way as to love so deeply those whom my heart calls friend, brother, sister, cherished, loved...and then walk away when time and circumstances ascertain..?