by Charlene Thomas

Created on: November 06, 2008

How perfect. A cold, rainy day to commensurate a cold, damp grey church where my brother's icy, stone cold body lays in a chillingly grey steel coffin. How perfect. I look around for an exit route and try to plan a way to escape. There are ushers standing guard in their holy white uniforms with one hand behind their Baptist back and the other hand extending a box of tissues. I look around but there is nothing around me to help me become oblivious to my cold, aching heart. I sat next to my mother who is just hugging herself, rocking back and forth. Her eyes are icy and glazed over with thick tears constantly flowing down hanging on to her chin like glaciers before they drop into her lap. My sister is sobbing profusely as bitter words flow from her month wafting through the air like a nasty spin of winter wind whipping around the coldest winter day we could have here in New York City. The chill factor here is definitely below zero.

There was nothing in this world that could have ever prepared me for the pain I was about to feel when my brother died. If you could understand the physical pain of stubbing your toe, bumping your head, or breaking your thumb, just put them all together so that they occur all at once. Now multiply that a million times over. This still pales in comparison to the pain of grieving that I feel. I'd rather be poked in the eye with a hot dagger than to feel this pain. I just want this feeling to stop. I just want it to go away. I want to go back to a time when everything was bright. Everything was everything. I was alright and my brother was alright. He was alive and his big smille was lighting up the room and my life. We had hope and a future that was solidly locked in place.

Now that future is destroyed. I have determined that I will never feel the full extent of joy and happiness that I felt before my brother died ever again. The anger and hurt overwhelms any hope of me ever smiling again. The desire to cause pain to the punks who gunned my brother down trumps any kind deed I have left in me. The sun will never shine as bright and be as golden. The moon will never cast a beautiful glow in my eyes again. No one had the right to take his life. No one. What gave them the right to put this hole in my life where my brother used to be? How do they expect me to live again?

I gasp for air as I run out of breath. I hear this piercing wail that resonates throughout my entire body. My body quakes and I realize that the wails are coming out of me. I

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