Who Knows

Play this song as you read a page, that hasn’t found its spot, in my growing memoir.

Sometimes, I forget I have a brother. The same brother I’ve had for my entire 23 years, 8 months, and 2 days of life. How does this happen?

It’s been so easy.

Then, my phone will ring in his tone and an invisible fist takes a cheap shot to my stomach that slowly turns into heartburn acid and ends up as bubbles in my throat. Then inside my brain a circuit triggers a complete guilty feeling that I… again… have forgotten Chad.

I force myself to listen to this one song, “Who Knows” by Avril Lavigne, from the night of the accident. It was stuck in my head like The Andy Griffith Show whistle and was the one thing I clung on to for my sanity that night.

I try to make myself immune to it, to him, to the feelings, to the tears. First, I feel nauseas and then my cheeks turn pink. And finally, goose bumps rise off the top of my head, almost like I placed my hand on one of those static electricity balls at a science museum. I don’t get to the point of tears and heaving in the bathroom like the years right after Chad’s accident. I call this progress.

It’s kind of like getting over a dead relative or friend; you never really do, you just learn to adjust to a life without them. And then eventually, you forget.

 

– Start reading Concentrated Breathing now!