The days that followed are a strange, sad blur in my memory. The pain in my heart was an oppressive force, as if in the night, somebody had dropped an anvil on my chest. It's a feeling that cannot be understood until you, yourself have lost a brother. We were busy, though. Regardless of all circumstances, we were on our feet. A family therapist was hired, and pills were prescribed to manage our grief. The pills, they didn't do much more than numb the mind. Each day was still carried out with chains. Every mechanical function requiring the effort of will. The pills weren't for everyone, anyway. We all knew that. They were for my Mother. And me. We were stricken with a grief so complete that we were rendered useless. All functionality and personality had been completely overwrought. She couldn't answer the phone, and I was afraid to leave my room or the back porch. But there were things to do, people to see, funerals to plan. It was not a time for solitude, but rather, a time for mind-distracting tasks. In the mornings, just to get out of bed, I took twice my pill dosage.
Isaac sat by my side as I started my second pack that day. He took one and lit up, quietly puffing away. The amount of nicotine I had consumed in the past few days made me feel ill, but I had thrown up so much from the shock of loss that it didn't make much of a difference, anyway. I was sick all of the time, now. And the cigarettes, though a small distraction, kept the clocks ticking. They were just right. Mindless enough so as not to overstress (reading books and watching TV had proven fruitless), and concentrated enough that it did pass time efficiently. I spent my free time paying attention to them. I concentrated on the orange of the embers, and watched the ashes fall. It became like a science experiment. I learned a lot about gravity, and how to ruin a perfectly decent pair of jeans.
Isaac didn't even mention it when he sat next to me. I had managed, that day, to do absolutely nothing in the aid of anyone else. This is something that would normally stir and irritate Isaac to no end, but he didn't even care. He didn't say anything at all for a number of moments, and I noted how remarkably our family dynamic had changed just overnight.
"Dad wants us to change the hotline" He said, finally. He sounded defeated.
I sat on the thought for a second, and after taking a long drag I said, "Why? And say What?"
"Because the last message is from Zac." Isaac quickly dissolved to an indecipherable mess. "And he thinks its ghosts to have his voice on the machine right now."
I shook my head, "And we're so much better? Listen to us. We're more depressing than the fucking machine. Can't someone else do it?"
Isaac shrugged and shook his head. I was struck with a bout of helplessness and at that moment we were silent with our tears, and the intense searing pressure against our skulls.
"God." I said, "I just want to stop crying."
"Tell me about it." He replied. "My nose hurts and I have a headache... and I can't sleep because it hurts so much. It's not fucking fair. Why him?" Isaac's speech had a consistent pattern of lucidity followed by warbly, drawn-out words with every phrase he spoke.
"I feel like it's a sick joke." I said. "It's not real."
"God damn it." He stood up and threw his cigarette onto the stone step, toeing it out before walking on the front lawn and sitting down by himself, completely silent. I understood why he did it. It was the same reason I had left as well. Everyone inside was concerned with arranging and changing and helping and all we wanted was just some time to ourselves. To think. To grieve. To grasp what was far too big for our hands.
I stood and I went inside, hurrying past all the relatives, the noise, and activity to the stairs, where it was quiet. I paced the hallway and stopped outside of Zac's door, leaning my head against it. I realized that I would never again have to knock on this door and yell at it's owner to Get Out Of Bed We're Late, and I once again began to cry. It was like a wave: One moment I was drowned and incapacitated by pain, and the next moment I couldn't feel at all. I quietly turned the knob to Zac's door, and was startled when an already lit light flooded the hallway and my vision. My Dad was sitting at his desk playing absently with a snow globe. He didn't hear me enter, and jumped a little in surprise when I approached, touching his shoulder.
"Dad...?"
"Taylor."
My connection to my parents had always been with my mother. My relationship with my father was shoddy at best, and had decayed increasingly over the years as I became more interested in parties and drugs over my family and myself. Every conflict was met with shouting and misunderstanding. I drove him to hit me once, and after that I avoided him for months, escaping back into the jaws of Los Angeles. I deserved it. I deserved to be hit in the face with a bat, at that point in my life, but I knew then that we could never see eye to eye. We never had, and then, for sure, we never would. I was watery and emotional, and my father was solid and stoic. Those were traits Isaac identified with, not I.
My father placed the globe on the desk and I sat down on Zac's unmade bed. He smiled at me, very gently.
"You're hiding from them too?" I said.
"Yeah." He said, softly. His deep voice only rumbling minutely in his throat. "I needed to think. And to be in a quiet place."
"Why can't this all wait? I just don't get it. Poor Mom is down there with the minister, and the kids are all watching movies. Everyone's running around - you'd almost think it was a wedding, or something." I sniffed, "It just doesn't seem fair to him or us."
My father grunted and sat back in his chair, I watched him carefully, seeing in this moment where I can't read him at all.
"Taylor, we need someone to speak at the funeral. Someone from the family." He said, after a long silence. "I want you to."
The weight of his offer, and the reality of the word 'funeral' choked me. I felt ill again. "Me? Why me?"
"Because, Taylor, You're the only one of us that could do it right."
"What about Isaac?"
"Isaac..." He paused, "Isaac wouldn't know what to say."
"And I do?"
"You always do."
I stood up and paced around the room. This wasn't fair. I had three days. That wasn't nearly enough time to sum up a lifetime. I couldn't think, or function, or write my own name at the top of a page. I wanted to say no. I wanted to, so badly. But I knew I couldn't. I stopped and I stared at my father's eyes for a very long time, until I was crying unabashedly.
"Fine. Okay. I'll do it."