“Uncle Joey is dead—” I barely get my words out. “I can’t breathe?—”
“Jackson, listen to me. Listen to my voice.” Ollie tells me and starts helping me to breathe through my overwhelming emotions. “Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat it. Can you feel your heart rate slowing?”
I shake my head, but he can’t see it. “No.”
“Fuck. I’m on my way.” Ollie swears more while there’s noise in the background. “I’ll call Eli.”
“Okay,” I whisper, wiping my eyes with my shirt.
“Are you sure you’ll be fine until I get there?” My best friend sounds worried.
“I need you, brother. Only you.”
“Hang in there, J. I’m only fifteen minutes away,” he tells me reassuringly. I can’t get more words out, so I hang up.
I slowly slide down the fridge to sit on my kitchen floor. I let it all out when my ass hits the dark wooden floor—my body shakes uncontrollably, and I feel sick to my stomach. I still can't breathe right, and my eyes hurt from all the tears. All the pain of my childhood, the years of abuse, my recent breakup drama, and my uncle’s death get out in one massive emotional waterfall, flowing faster than water over Niagara Falls.
I try to get up, but my legs are unsteady—like a newborn giraffe. So I stay here, next to the broken pieces of my breakfast bowl.
I don’t know how long I lay on the floor in a fetal position until I hear Ollie’s voice and feel him lying next to me. He takes me in his arms and hugs me. That hug alone makes me feel more whole than I have felt since I heard the news. Having my best friend here is everything. I cry until no more tears come out. Ollie strokes my hair and whispers that I’ll be fine.
After a while, we slowly move, and Ollie helps me sit against the counter. He walks to the kitchen closet and takes out cleaning supplies to clean up my mess. I watch as he sweeps the broken pieces off the floor. That bowl was my favorite. Just like my uncle. Fuck, even thinking about him makes me want to cry again.
Getting up from the floor, I walk to the bathroom and look at myself—my pale skin is almost see-through. Sunglasses will dowonders to hide my pain from the world. Only I and Ollie know how much it all hurts.
A week after my cousin called to tell me the worst news of my life, I’m standing in front of the funeral home with Soph. When she heard about my uncle’s passing, Soph organized travel forus.I’m not complaining, because she’s gotten under my skin, making me feel like I need her to get through this pain. And that scares me almost as much as imagining my life without my uncle.
My only issue is that we still haven’t talked much after the party, so I have no idea where we stand. But having her here helps in its own special way. Even thinking about getting onto that plane alone was making me break out in a sweat. Soph was my saving grace, keeping me together when all I wanted to do was fall apart on our way to Omaha. Her presence alone calmed my nerves, and her touch made me relax.
“Are you ready to go in?” Soph asks. Her black lacy dress has long sleeves covered by her new leather jacket. I’m wearing an all-black suit with a black shirt—my cousins requested no ties as Uncle Joey hated those.
“Is a person ever ready to say goodbye to people they love?” I mumble, wishing I had a cigarette to create that immediate sense of relaxation. But I’m trying my best to quit smoking, so that isn’t an option.
Soph shakes her head and looks at the front doors of the building. “Not really. But I think saying goodbye will help with the grieving process.”
I ponder her words. “The worst part about this entire grieving thing is when you feel like you’re living two lives. You have this one life where you pretend everything is okay…then behind closed doors, you can let it all go after your heart has been silently screaming in pain all day long.”
I look down at my feet before continuing. “Uncle Joey was larger than life, and now he’s gone. He was always there cheering me on. He once told me that if you try to find yourself, you will get lost on the way. But if you try to create yourself, you can try again and again until you like the result. I need to remember that and many other things I learned from him. Fuck, how can I survive—” My voice cracks, and I look up to stop the tears.
Soph grabs my hand and squeezes it. We stand in the almost empty parking lot outside the funeral home in silence. The only sounds I hear are passing cars and my wildly beating heart. I’m not ready to walk in yet. Not when my heart is aching for all the times I wish I had told my uncle how much he means to me. How I hope I could return to our final phone call two days before he died. I wish I had told him how much I loved him more often when I still had the chance.
“Life is so fucking unfair,” I barely get out, emotion making my voice waver again. My eyes are burning. I’m not used to crying this much, and my body screams for a break from all the emotions. But I can’t stop.
“I know, Jax, I do,” Soph assures me.
And I believe every word she says. “Fuck, Soph, I’m drowning in it all. It feels like I can’t breathe. I can’t?—”
She wraps her arms around me as I sink into her embrace. I smell her perfume and shampoo, a mix of vanilla and something fruity—it calms my rapidly beating heart as shetightens her hold on me. And there aren’t many other places I’d rather be right now than her arms.
When we walk in a little later, I say hi to my cousins and other people I recognize. Everything is going as expected until I hear a familiar female voice behind me. “Is that you, Jackson? Come to say hi to your mom, you little shit.”
I turn to face my mother and try to hide my reaction at the sight of her. Trisha looks like she’s been on a bender for a week and came straight from the bar to her brother’s memorial. She smells like a brewery too. Her tiny frame is even more petite than I remember in a faded black dress that hangs off her. Her blonde hair is in a greasy ponytail and those emotionless blue eyes that are nothing like mine stare at me, making me wonder if we’re even related. If I hadn’t seen photos from the hospital the day I was born, I would question who my mother truly is. But unfortunately, this person in front of me holds that title.
“You should go home. We don’t need you. Let us grieve him in peace,” I grind out between my teeth and sign to the door, not interested in Trisha’s attitude and disrespectful behavior today.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” she hisses through her yellow teeth.
“I’m here to pay my respect to the only man who has been a father figure in my life, and I don’t need your presence.”
