This is what not having a brother anymore feels like.

Tomorrow will be one week since my brother passed away.  It feels like all of us have lived about 40 years since that day, so I think we can safely say that it's been the longest week of our lives.

In addition to the absolutely incredible outpouring of support we've gotten from family, friends, and members of our community, I've gotten some really really nice comments on my last blog.  Several people have told me that I should keep blogging if I feel like it, since it seems to be very helpful to me.  And in many ways it is.

However...

I want to say right now that I will certainly not be offended if anyone decides that they'd rather not read this blog or any others that I happen to spew out in this time of grief.  My blogs used to be humorous and raunchy, but right now they're something of an open letter or a diary.  I'm going to be brutally honest, maybe even a little graphic.  If that's not for you, I totally get it.  Like I said in my last blog, I'm not writing this stuff to make anyone feel worse.  I just need to get it out, so I don't feel like a boiling pot of water that's going to explode.

So, that was your warning.  Someday, hopefully soon, I'd like to get back to being a little more light-hearted, but I don't think that's going to be today.

The funeral was pretty much how I expected it would be.  More than half a dozen of Mike's friends came from Kansas, Iowa, Chicago, and New Jersey.  They came all the way to New York.  I couldn't believe it.  They (along with my cousin, Dave,) carried my brother's casket and helped shovel dirt over it.  For god's sake, Michael, you have no idea how much you meant to so many.  It fills my heart and breaks it at the same time.  Ryan Mattie and Chris Woodside, I have to mention by name.  They were so good to Mike when he was alive, and so good to him now that he's gone too.  And to us and my parents as well.  I couldn't ask for better surrogate brothers.

When we got to the cemetery, everyone else hung out around the road to wait for others to arrive, but I walked up to the hill just to look at the hole in the ground.  It just about broke me.  Not as bad as it did seeing my brother's hearse roll up, or watching his coffin slowly disappear into the ground.  I think I felt my heart splinter into a dozen little pieces just watching them put Mike in that little hole, thinking of him being here, alone, for all eternity.

But he won't be alone.  There's a spot next to him for my dad when his time comes, not for a long time, of course.  And my dear uncle Paul is buried just in front of Mike.  The kind of mischief those two would get up to when they were alive...  It gives me so much comfort to know that Uncle Paul is with him and Mike is with Uncle Paul, too.  I couldn't believe how many people were at the funeral.  Afterwards, we had an amazing gathering at my Aunt Lori's house and then about 20 of us went to the Peekskill Brewery where Sarah gave a toast to Mike's memory.

My sister has been such a champ.  She took on the enormous (not to mention incredibly difficult) task of cleaning up my brother's apartment and packing up his things.  Sarah has always been lucky to make really really good friends wherever she goes, whether it's high school or college or sorority or nursing school.  Her friends Whitney, Sammie, Sarah, Stef, and Becca have been by our house pretty much everyday since last Monday and they spent the last two days packing and hauling stuff out of Mike's apartment in some pretty nasty heat.  I don't know if they'll ever find their way onto this blog, but I hope they know how much we all appreciate their help.  Not only is it just an awful lot of work, but it's also just one of those things I don't think I could have done, let alone my mom or dad.

Sarah's always been better at controlling her emotions than I am.  She has a better work ethic too, which means she can get a job done, no matter how hard it is.  And it was hard, I know it was.  But that's Sarah.  She's younger 13 months younger than I am, but infinitely more capable and more worldly.

I went inside Mike's apartment.  Sarah told me I shouldn't, and I hadn't planned on doing so, but I did.  Mom said she kind of wanted to go in, so I told her I'd take a look and let her know how bad it was.  I maintain that the scene inside the apartment could never have been as bad as I was imagining it in my mind, but I still kind of wish I hadn't seen it.  And though I firmly believe it was completely my mom's choice whether she wanted to or not, I'm pretty glad she and Dad opted not to.  There was blood, but that was pretty much it.  Any episode of Game of Thrones or autopsy scene from CSI is more graphic.  But I guess it's different when it's your brother.

Anyway, now all of Mike's worldly possessions that we wanted to keep and sort through are in the big room in our basement that we used to call the "playroom" when we were young.  Tons of clothes, shoes, Blu-Rays, a laptop, a Rubbermaid tub full of kitchen accoutrement, a gun case without a gun inside, and some more clothes.  All of it crammed into one room.  I found myself staring at all of it today and thinking to myself, "This is what suicide looks like."  All of those things once belonged to a person with a life of his own, but now it's just....stuff.  A pile of things that we have to decide what we want to keep and what we want to get rid of.  Sarah has already claimed a gray Vineyard Vines pullover.  She's been wearing it all day.  I want at least a lacrosse hoodie or jacket.  Maybe I'll keep one of his North Faces because it just seems practical.

Mike developed expensive taste during college.  He loved to gamble but even more than that, he loved to spend his winnings.  He once dated a girl named Sarah for about a year and I don't think anyone has been showered with expensive gifts like she was when she was my brother's girlfriend.  So now we have a collection of Brooks Brothers dress shirts, expensive dress shoes and expensive sneakers, $500+ watches, two huge LED TVs and a set of golf clubs that could probably pay for my flight to London.  All of these things that my brother cared so much about that essentially got "left behind" when he decided it wasn't worth it anymore.

Last Monday night and most of Tuesday, I thought that the shock and grief would be the worst part, but I'm starting to learn that those things fade after a while.  What takes its place, and what I assume will hang around for the rest of my life is how much I miss my brother.  My old brother, of course.  Not the one that didn't speak to me.

He used to call me Roberta instead of Rebecca because he knew it made me mad.  Over the years, that nickname got shortened to Bert.  He would call me Bert almost all the time.  We haven't yet figured out how to unlock his phone and iPad, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I was in his contacts list as Bert.

He was such a troll, too.  He used to give me "cobra hugs" which I would scream and try to escape from, to no avail.  In case you're unfamiliar with the term, I'll let you know.  A cobra hug is when the person hugging you digs their chin into your shoulder as hard as they can while hugging you.  It hurts like hell and Mike thought it was hilarious.  Sometimes he would fake me out.  When I thought he was going in for a cobra hug, he would instead tap my shoulder with his chin like a woodpecker, and for some reason that cracked me up.

When he was in college, he had a dumpy, two-door red Chevy Cavalier that he referred to fondly as his Cherry Red Ferrari.  It was a pigsty.  It always smelled like a barn because of the lacrosse cleats and sweaty gear inside.  And I hated riding in it because my brother drove like a crazy person.  When I first bought my 2006 Fusion, he paid me like $40 to borrow it because wanted to impress a girl (his eventual girlfriend, Sarah) that he was taking on a date.  When he rode with me in the Fusion, I eventually had to make a rule that he wasn't allowed in the front seat because he would always play with the buttons, open up the sun roof (when it was raining) and sneakily put the car in neutral at stoplights when I wasn't paying attention, causing me to rev the engine and go nowhere once the light turned green.  No matter how many times I insisted he wasn't allowed in the front seat, he always got in.

Goddamn it, Mike.  I miss you so much.  All I can think of now is how much I wish you would have stayed.  And then mentally scold myself for how absolutely futile it is to say "I wish..." in this instance.  I think I mentioned in my last blog that this is literally the first big problem I've had in my life that can't be solved with money or a sincere apology.  No amount of wishing will do a damn thing.

I don't know what Jews believe happens after death.  I don't know if that's at all relevant to me because I don't know what I believe happens after death.  But I kind of like to think that Mike can see and hear us now, wherever he is.  All I want to know is that he's happy, wherever that is.  And that he knows how much his death has gutted us all -- not because I would want him to feel guilty but because, wherever he is, I want him to know what he means to us all.

I'm going up to Minnesota with my mom, hopefully within the next week or so.  Being around family helps so much, and I can't wait to see everyone.  Thanks again for all of your support.  It's what's been getting us by.  That and the ridiculous amount of food that's been dropped off.  (Love you, Judy.)

Love you all.

I didn't write this to make anyone feel worse. I just need to feel better.

What's the proper etiquette regarding the correct amount of time to wait before deleting your brother's phone number? I'm asking for a friend.

I've always had a pretty sick sense of humor but I think it's developing at an obscene rate. I'll catch myself thinking things to myself that I know are so far past the line that I would never utter them out loud. I wonder if that's normal. These are the things I think to myself while sitting on a Southwest airliner making its descent into Newark, knowing that the casket carrying my only brother's dead body is somewhere in the darkness below my feet, crammed in amongst rolling suitcases and duffle bags. 

Other thoughts that pass through my mind. 

When will this seem real?

How can I make this easier on everyone else?

How can make this easier on myself?

Are Sarah and I going to be "enough" for Mom and Dad?

Will I ever stop hating myself for letting this happen?

Is Mike okay?

Does Mike know how sorry I am?

(Continued the next day...)

And now that I'm sitting here on the day that I'm going to bury my brother, I still have the same thought pushing its way, unbidden, through my brain.  It's not real.  None of this is real.  Any minute now, I'm going to wake up.  There's no way this is real life.

And why didn't I do anything to stop it?

Some friends and family know that my brother and I hadn't spoken to each other for almost the last ten months.  I made a mistake that caused a rift between us and that was that.  Mike was already dealing with depression and he was one of those people who had the tendency to push people away when things got bad.  And I was angry enough with him that I let him push me away when I should have been doing the opposite.  There were things I said to him and about him that I'll never forgive myself for and I don't know if I'll ever get over this feeling that his death is at least partially my fault.

Knowing that I'll never see or talk to him again is harder than I can even explain, but that's not even the hardest part.  The hardest part is knowing the pain he was in, trying to picture his last moments on earth, and knowing that my brother died thinking that he was utterly alone and that no one cared about it.  Seeing my parents and sister look so utterly broken.  Thinking about how we're a family of four now instead of a family of five.  Knowing that I'm the oldest child now.  Thinking of the rest of my life saying, "I had a brother" instead of, "I have a brother."  Watching them load a big, rectangular-shaped crate onto a commercial airplane and knowing that that's my brother, lying on the tarmac like any other piece of cargo.  Those are the hardest parts.

So, today I bury my brother.  And tomorrow...I don't know what comes tomorrow.  We get on with our lives, I suppose, but even returning to normal life seems like an impossible task -- let alone the fact that I have a job search looming, a trip to London that doesn't even seem possible anymore, and everything else on top of that.

By far the most difficult part of all of this is me just wanting to know that, wherever he is, my brother is okay.  More than anything else, I want him to know that I'm sorry for all his suffering but most sorry that I contributed to his loneliness.  This is the first mistake I've ever made in my life where there's nothing I can do to fix it, and that hurts the most.  I can't bear to picture him in pain, but lately that's the only stuff that's been running through my mind.

I wish I could tell him that I love him and I'm sorry he had no idea how loved he was.  I'm sorry, Michael.  I'm so sorry.