“He’s just down the street, he said he’d be here soon” I tell her, adjusting my cap in the mirror.
My mom steps behind me, helping me with a tender look in her eyes. “I can’t believe my baby girl is graduating.”
“She’s a grown woman, Rebecca, let the girl do that herself,” my father scolds, reaching to pull my mother away.
But I stop him, grabbing her instead, “wait. I want you to help me.” My mom’s eyes start to water, “I need my mom to help me one last time.”
There’s boxes all over my room, my entire childhood packed away, waiting to be shipped off to my new apartment in Colorado.
My new apartment with Johnny.
“I’m always going to be here to help you,” she cries, pulling me into a tight hug, “I’m always going to be your mom, and you’re always going to be my baby girl.” She holds me there for a while, then pushes me back and smooths my gown down my arms. “I know we’re in a rush but I left a little something on your desk. I’d really like it if you opened it now.”
“Mom.”
“Please, my love,” she begs.
I look to my dad, and he nods. “We have enough time.”
“Okay fine,” I say, walking towards my room, “but tell Johnny to come in when he gets here.”
When I walk through the doorway, my eyes land on a letter sitting right where my mother said she left it, but it’s not like the letters I’ve been getting for seven months, it’s in an envelope with my name on it.
I recognize the handwriting.
Jurian.
Shaking, I pick it up and trace my fingersover my name.
I don’t understand, how the hell did he...
Did he write this before he died?
Opening it slowly, I feel tears starting to form. All the grief and pain I’ve felt these last months crash into me all at once.
I feel like I’m being ripped apart.
My brother wrote me a letter before he died, and left it here for me to read, probably thinking he’d be by my side while I opened it.
I try reading the words written in his messy scrawl, but I can’t see through the tears. Heavy sobs wrack through me, and by the time I’m gasping for breath, I feel Johnny wrap his arms around me.
“Pixie, are you okay?”
“It’s from J,” I gasp. “H- he left this for me, I can’t even read it, I can’t see.”
“Do you want me to read it for you?” He offers.
Do I?
I don’t even know if I want to read this, not because I don’t want to read whatever’s in this letter, but because it feels like the last piece of my brother.
Sure, I have his iPod, and I use it all the time, but this is the last part of my brother from before the accident. Everything else is tainted with the after.
I don’t want this to feel like a goodbye, but it does.
I’m saying goodbye to my parents, to my childhood home, to the place where I grew up, and now it feels like I’m saying goodbye to my brother.
There’s a world out there where he never died, where he and I are getting ready together to go to our graduations. But that’s not my world.
