Mixed tape medley.

Mixed tape medley.

 

Last Friday, a friend passed me a CD of songs with instructions to hole myself in my room and listen from track 1 to 20. I attempted to do just that on Sunday night, but distraction came in the form of writing and the music was soon relegated to become the haunting background for my idea generation. 

Yesterday, I finally settled into the couch to pay my full attention to the songs, some of which were already consistent favorites on my playlist. I listened, and I suppose on some subconscious level, I internalized for when Ingrid Michaelson's A Bird's Song snuck up unexpectedly on my own playlist in the late night, I bawled like a baby.

"When I would play my song
You used to sing along.
I always seem to forget
How fragile are the very strong.
 
I’m sorry I can’t steal you
I’m sorry I can’t stay
So I put band-aids on your knees
And watch you fly away.

I’m sending you away tonight
I’ll put you on a bird’s strong wing
I’m saving you the best way I know how
I hope again one day to hear you sing."


The song struck a chord when my brother first got hospitalized, but I had listened to it countless times since with nary a tear. Last night however, the lyrics took on a life of their own and twisted their lyrical limbs around my heart. The pain shot through the armor of indifference I've settled into and for the first time, I felt the loss.

To all my friends to have smiled and laughed with me in the past weeks, thank you for moving me along and for allowing me to forget. To wooka, thank you for knowing and understanding, even when I didn't, the need for emotional catharsis.

Coping mechanisms.

Coping mechanisms.

An air of lethargy has settled over the family. A million things and a thousand loose ends demand our attention, but we can't seem to get down to settling anything concrete.

There's neither bawling nor weeping. In fact, there haven't been any tears except for the occasional damp eye in the wee hours of the morning when the house is dark and quiet. My brother never lived with us, except for a short while after his first surgery; but I see him everywhere in my mind's eye.

On the couch with that hideous orange Hawaiian shirt and thick nerdy glasses; by the window grilling the pineapples for Mother's Day; intentionally shoveling chips into his mouth as I workout on the eliptical...

I'm not sure I can face reality.

Death and other lessons in life.

Death and other lessons in life.

The thing about losing a loved one is that it takes you completely by surprise, even if you've had the past six months to prepare yourself for it.

A part of me went, "I knew it!" when the phone call came in on Thursday morning, telling us that my brother's condition had taken a turn for the worse. The other part went cold when my mother went on to tell us that he was braindead. I can't say I hadn't expected this, not when he hasn't woken up from his coma in three months. I can't say I expected it either, for he had made it through so many major surgeries and was just about to be transferred into a nursing home.

Time passed by in a blur at the hospital, where family and friends debated the accuracy of the prognosis. It was difficult to get our heads around the fact that he was brain dead. The man on the bed looked like he was asleep as he had been the past three months; he couldn't be brain dead. "The doctor said he is," was my only reply for science offered the most logical evidence. However, his pressure remained lowish but constant and I left the hospital late that first night asking myself the very same question.

His pressure fell to the 50s and miraculously rose back up to the 60s within hours on Friday, and we started to think that he could make it through the new year. My heart stopped jumping into my throat each time the phone rang when I was away from the ward, and life seemed almost normal again on Saturday morning. "I don't think it'll be within these two days at least," my mom said coolly as we sat on the couch at home, neither of us in a hurry to go to the hospital.

And then, the phone rang again. It was the hospital, telling us that his pressure had fallen to 64 and that his breathing was becoming increasingly shallow. "I've been scared too many times by them. It was in the 50s yesterday afternoon but it rose didn't it. I'm not gonna let them scare me," my mom said. So the parents enjoyed a leisure breakfast before heading down, while I waited at home for my aunt to return from her errands and for my sister to wake up. The call came barely 30 minutes later. "He can't make it, you can come down now."

And that was it. My brother's gone.

A part of me is still in denial. My final year project's marketing stunt kept me occupied for most of the weekend, while my best friends rallied around me to fill the empty gaps. I've succumbed only to short cries mostly in the privacy of home and loved ones, and the endless streams of friends filled the funeral with more laughter than tears. In fact, the entire wake right down to his cremation felt entirely surreal.

I can't seem to come to terms yet that I've lost my only brother and this impassiveness scares me.