Dear Thomas,
From the edge of your property, balancing on the curb in my tiny ballerina flats, I can look down your driveway and watch the morning sun filter in through the foliage of the treeline in the distance.
If I move myself between the strings of parked cars and settle on the small dirt path that snakes behind your house, I can follow it to your backyard where your bicycle is still propped up against the garage, as if to be returned to at any moment.
Scattered in the grass, Thomas, are the reminiscent pieces of your childhood: an empty, busted sandbox discarded in the bushes; a toy truck lost under the steps; a flat soccer ball, an abandoned beach towel, dirt patches from a kiddie pool that you never used once you thought you could swim.
I can see you, Thomas. Running through the woods with a plastic sword; playing pirates in the tree fort you called the Jolly Rodger; chasing your sheepdog, Ollie, away from the neighbour's cat.
Every inch of this soil holds a memory I cannot get away from.
Maybe that is why your brother wants me to write your eulogy, as if he thinks I am the only one who can read it and feel nothing to your tragedy.
I want to say it's not true, Thomas.
Some argue that by feeling nothing, you are really feeling something. So I suppose I do.
I feel the nothing, and I know how bad it hurts.
They say a coward dies a thousand deaths, while the brave die only once. Do you remember when I told you that? We were standing on the cliff at the lake last summer, and I was trying to convince you to jump with me.
You said that would be reckless, and reckless people die.
I quoted Ernest Hemingway, and you, remembering Catherine in A Farewell to Arms, said "A coward must have said that, he knows too much of cowards."
Which am I now, Thomas?
Today is supposed to be the goodbye. Instead of comforting your mother back at the house with your relatives, I'm in the trees, thin paper clutched in my hand, finding my way through these trails without you.
The last time I was here, I had one finger hooked in the belt loop of your jeans while you moved stray branches and found logs to act as bridges over too deep puddles. And Ollie, who's been with you for seventeen years, trotted behind us loyally.
When I reach the old willow at the end of the path, I regard the cross at its base tentatively. I know that Ollie is buried there, just out of reach, and for some reason I find comfort in that. Seventeen years and he never truly left your side.
Then my eyes find the carvings, Thomas. The cheesy engravings you embedded in the willow's bark a couple months back. I remember watching you write my name, the crooked grin on your face when I laughed at the silliness of it. But I remember thinking just how crazy it seemed to offer what we were to the empty void of nothing. As if four letters cut into a tree could ever mean anything more than what it was.
Something wet hits my cheek and brings me back to the agony in the present. It begins to rain, and I wonder at how long it has been since the last time it did. I think to close my eyes, as if I could go back to that moment, restart that night. Try again.
Maybe I'll tell you to put your seatbelt on. Maybe I'll make sure you never get in the car. Maybe I'll never want to meet your father in the first place.
I'd like to believe I deserve a second chance. Some people say second chances change nothing if you haven't learned from your first mistake. I don't know what my first mistake really was, so I guess a second chance would really be wasted on me.
It's quiet again, Thomas. Just like the ending of that night.
That used to be our favourite part of coming here: the way we couldn't hear your parent's friends hollering back at the house; later when we couldn't hear your parents arguing; later when we couldn't hear the sadness seeping from the walls; everything just slipped away.
Now, I find something so incredibly lonely about the silence. Maybe it is because you are not here to share it with me.
I remember standing on that cliff, Thomas. I remember jumping without you anyways, hitting the water hard, but resurfacing without any ounce of joy. I felt nothing.
This time it is worse. In an unmeasurable way.
You see, Thomas, maybe that was my mistake.
I was never the brave one, but I let you make me feel like it.
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