I haven’t written in a while, I haven’t felt the need to write in a while.

It is the most unbearable feeling a person can handle. No need to look back… to remember… because every time you close your eyes you see the body, laying there… motionless… Pale doesn’t seem to be remotely close to what the color of his skin was… white… ghost like… clear… no definition between his cheeks, nose and lips. I can’t stop hearing my mother screaming, a scream that I have never heard before, from the lowest, deepest part of her being. In the matter of a moment, and what seemed to be an hour, my world came crashing down around me.

It was a normal Saturday. I was working at our family restaurant. I just finished washing the floors and the rooms smelt of cleaning solutions. The restaurant was ready to open, doors were unlocked, lights were on, music was playing. I was in the basement doing payroll when I heard my name. I knew it was my mother but it was a deep scream, something I can’t describe, something I pray to never hear again. As I ran to the bottom of the stairs… I knew. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, her hands waving in the air, begging for help. She could barely breathe and suffered saying the words “your brother, something is wrong with your brother.”

I remember running. My heart didn’t seem to be pumping at all, I held my breath, I just ran. When I got up the two flights of stairs and opened their house door, I saw him. His lifeless body sitting up right on the couch. My father was standing above him yelling at him to wake up, screaming, swearing, asking him how he could do this. His head had gone limp and as it rolled slowly to his right shoulder, his eye lids opened and all I could see was white as his eyes rolled to the back of his head. My stomach instantly turned, it felt like a knife went directly into my chest and all I could do was run. I ran. I ran back down the two flights of stairs and grabbed my cell phone. I knew the ambulance was already on the way and I called my boyfriend. Something about hearing his voice and knowing he was coming made me know I could handle this. “He overdosed. You need to come here now.”

As I ran back up the stairs and was ready to take the turn to go up another flight, my dad and our head chef was carrying my brother’s lifeless body down the stairs. I lost it. They put him on the floor and his chest wasn’t moving. I remember his arms were spread out, head bent to the right, white, so white. I collapsed, I couldn’t breathe. My finger tips and toes were tingling… I felt like my chest was about to explode. I remember just repeating “oh my god, oh my god” as if now there was some higher power that was going to come save us. The Chef kept saying he was going to be okay, I think by saying it we all felt like it could be a possibility. “Just breathe, just take a breath!”

I don’t remember how I got outside. I guess I had walked over his body.. I was searching for my mom who I could hear hysterically screaming for the police. It seemed like hours had gone by. We were so close to the hospital and the police station… I should have heard sirens by now, but I didn’t hear anything besides her screaming. The sound of a mother loosing a child is completely deafening. For the first time in my life I couldn’t console her. I couldn’t take her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. I knew I couldn’t calm her down and I didn’t even dare try.

The police finally came, and as they heard the words “heroin overdose” the officer popped his trunk and grabbed his bag and ran to the door where my brother laid. They surrounded him and started working on him right away. My father was the closest, still screaming at my brother to wake up as if somewhere inside him he could hear and understand what was going on. “Wake up, wake up so I can kill you, wake up!” He kept repeating himself over and over again. I stood on the bricks as they laid him on the stretcher and ran him into the ambulance. Every part of his body I tried to remember…. The plastic green tube in his mouth, the bag pumping air into his chest, his grey checkered shirt, his tight skinny jeans, beige, his dark socks… all slowly wheeling by me.

As the ambulance drove away I was numb.

A few minutes later I got a call from my mother who was in the ambulance that he was awake. They had to give him two doses of Narcan to start his heart back up, he was dead. Hearing the words that he was dead had over powered the thought of him now being awake. I was in complete shock and couldn’t believe our lives had gotten to this point. The years of detox and rehab facilities, the months of Recovery High School, AA and NA meetings…

I drove to the hospital once I knew the restaurant was in good hands. Throughout the night I drove back and forth from the ER to the restaurant.. I couldn’t sit still… I couldn’t just wait. He was alive, which I realize is so huge, because there are so many people in this world who don’t survive an overdose, but to me, my brother was still gone. This isn’t the boy I knew… The boy who I used to read bed time stories to every night…I remember grabbing his tiny feet with his tiny toes and pretending to eat them as he laughed and laughed. I remember dressing him up and playing music in the living room … teaching him “adults dance like this” as we did the chicken dance. The years flashed through my head all night, and I still can’t get it out of my mind.

The excuses that I hear, the blame, “relapse” they call it. I don’t consider death to be a relapse. How can dying, no pulse, not breathing, your heart stopping, please someone explain how that is a relapse. This thing called addiction is a real bitch. It has completely consumed my family in the worse possible way. Every day has been a complete struggle… I don’t think I can ever come to terms with loosing my brother, yet deep inside I know this isn’t the end. The pain isn’t gone, and he isn’t done.