The Mourning After

Today, the emotional and physical exhaustion begins its slow recession and the reality of my sister's death becomes something I now carry with me as I carry on. Today is the morning after.

I have always been a younger brother, always felt her protective umbrella keeping me safe from the storm, the warmth that emanated from her touching my heart and my soul. I have known nothing but that absolute from my first breath, my first conscious thought. I have always awakened with an undeniable certainty that she was with me. And now only that she was.

It is the past tense that is so cruel. That takes a given and rips it from my grasp. It is an unfeeling and ugly adversary, showing no mercy, unwilling to negotiate, no room for compromise or conversation.

This morning the recent drama and tumult that was an omnipresent partner of mine is replaced by an uncomfortable, eerie silence. 

Today the sun has risen in the sky, and life, the existence that I have not noticed while caught in the maelstrom, returns to sharp focus.

I have always been a younger brother. Today, and for the rest of my days, I will have to embrace a different understanding of those words. Today the mourning after begins.