August 6, 2019

My Dearest Blaker ~

You’re being cremated today. Is that what you wanted? So many decisions that I’m not supposed to have to make – feelings of despair wash over me. I fall asleep at night, exhausted by my mindless and mind-full wonderings of what it means that you are not physically here anymore, now reduced to ashes and bone fragments. How does that affect my identity? I wake up in the middle of the night, only to be consumed by thoughts and memories of you. Hours tick by slowly. I check Facebook, email, find an article to read, maybe my eyes will feel the weight of my tiredness and succumb. If they do, I wake up, knowing that I must carry on.

I wonder if this is my new normal. Is every breath I take going to be consumed by the physical loss of you? I know that wasn’t your intent as you headed to the bathroom with foil wrapped Fentanyl. You were not a rookie though!!! You’ve warned many opiate addicted newly sober friends. Why couldn’t you heed your own advice? You knew the odds of fatal overdose were high – oh, the irony… I guess they didn’t listen either.

Did the thought cross your mind? Did you realize the effects of your leaving? I don’t think you did. If your realized how much you were loved, maybe it would have been enough – but maybe not – because, for some reason, you didn’t love yourself. You loved everyone else though.

My step-mom told me, a number of years ago, that I needed to let myself be loved. This is one thing that she said to me that resonates today. It resonates because I believe that you suffered the same consequence of parental abandonment. It’s the primal wound – the one that tells you not to trust, that you’re not good enough… It’s hard to overcome. You, or at least I, love with intention. We love all over the place. It’s messy and complicated, living in spite of being unlovable, somehow….

But I know in my head that that’s not true. Did you get there? I know you knew that I loved you, that I would love you forever, but did you know your brother loved you too – that you were ‘his first best friend?’ Did you know that your dad (Thom) wishes he could take back all those ridiculous arguments, that all of us, family and friends, would be left with so many ‘what ifs?’

I tell everyone who tells me, ‘I should have…’ that we cannot get stuck there. What’s done is done. For some reason, you were taken. It’s not up to anyone here to figure it out or second-guess it.

I just want to know, did you want to be cremated?