DEATH IS NOT FINAL

Death is not final.

I keep saying these words over and over in my head. I feel that to be so. I know that to be so. Death only curtails the physical presence, nothing more.

I am saying that now because, four months after his death, I really haven’t come to terms with Toto being gone. With Toto dying and will never be able to come knocking on our door, or holler when there is something obnoxiously funny to laugh about, or squeak in lip-synching through his favorite rock band sound. None of those. Anymore.

I try to shoo that away from my mind.

I am not writing this as an invitation for his spirit to hover around us as some superstition would have it. But I am writing this very much more to assure myself that he has not been erased from my life.

I haven’t mourn his loss. Not yet. Because to me, he is still very much here in my heart. And how I want to tell him that I love him so much, in spite of our differences. That I wish I was given the chance to be nice to him till the end. That I wish I wasn’t always the disapproving brother. That I wish I wasn’t the standard to measure up to because I, too, have my own imperfections.

Toto and I will never complement each other. We are extreme opposites. But we are brothers. He is my brother. And as yet, I cannot address him in the past tense.

I am crying now because I miss him. How strangely weird to say that when the only thing I remember when I used to see him was how I detested his life and what he has done with it.

I am crying now because one time I told my father that he better be prepared for when the time comes Toto will be soaked in his own blood as a result of his waywardness. I should have known better that it is I who won’t be prepared for such tragedy.

I am crying now because we are celebrating his birthday. Celebrating it when the celebrant has long been covered six feet under.

I am crying now for the ironies that will just be blunt reminders of things lost that never will be found again.