It was proving too much for me to handle alone. Last week my parents were helping me plan my wedding, this week I was planning their funeral. The process itself was stressful enough and not unlike the wedding planning: find a venue, find a minister, find a caterer, order flowers, but piled on top of everything else and I was about to have a break down.
I wish Richard was here. He's so good at keeping his calm and getting everything organized. But Richard was at the capital again. He's so busy with his campaign program and trying to gain a footing at the next level I barely see him.
And Erik...
Well. Erik hasn't been home in years. When I tried calling the last phone number I had for him, I got a nice old lady who kept calling me "dearie" but insisted it had been her number for at least 2 years. Of course, I also had to sit politely through her explanation of how her oldest son had bought the cell phone for her and how she wasn't exactly sure how it worked.
I sent a few emails to the last address I had listed for him when Mom and Dad were in the accident. I hadn't heard anything back. I don't know if he still uses that account or if he just doesn't check it often...or maybe it was just because of me.
I looked through the pile of paperwork that had been sitting on Mom's desk by her computer. Bills waiting to be paid, a letter from Aunt Dorrie waiting for an old-fashioned reply with pen and paper that will never arrive now, bank statements, catalogs, ads from the local grocery store.
I wish Mom was here. She'd know what to do. I wish Dad was here, he'd be completely useless, but he'd put his hand on my shoulder and give me the encouragement I needed to get through it. I wish anyone was here.
I found them in a drawer of the computer desk, a short stack of postcards all from Erik. Most of them photos of far away places with one line messages about how much he loved Maine or how he couldn't find good Mexican food in Iowa.
I breathed deeply. At least he'd been staying in touch with them, I thought. So that meant it really was just me. Something inside me fell at the realization.
I'd been suspicious of it ever since he left but somehow, sitting there in Mom's little office slash sewing room, looking at the postcards he'd been sending them for the last six years, it really sunk in. It was all too real for me suddenly and a stabbing pain tore through my core as the tears broke loose.
I hadn't done much crying in the few days since Mom and Dad were declared dead. Only 14 hours apart from eachother. I'd had just enough time to get used to the idea that Mom was gone, just enough time to build hope that Dad would pull through. And then I got the call from the hospital that Dad was gone too. I wasn't even able to get there in time to say good bye.
Richard had said he'd come home if I needed him to but I knew he needed to stay, so I told him I could handle it myself. Now I wish I had asked him to come home.
I started putting the contents of Mom's desk into boxes. What I was really looking for was the paperwork that she had showed me once that had all the instructions for her funeral on it. It was in a green folder somewhere. I knew she'd written it all down after Grandma passed. Mom had gone on a "I don't want my children to go through this" phase and made sure all her arrangements were taken care of.
Fat lot of good it was doing me now. I had no idea where she had put her files. I also had no idea if she had included Dad's wishes.
I smiled at my insistence on calling him "dad," it had always made him so proud that I chose to call him that. Gerald had married Mom just after I turned 13. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Part of me was glad they were together that day. I can't imagine either of them living long without the other. They were a true love story.
Dark thoughts rolled through my mood like marauding storm clouds. Gerald had been the best thing that had happened to Mom and he had been the best dad I could hope for-- far outshining the asshole that donated his DNA to me-- if only Gerald hadn't had any children of his own already.
I sat there, in Mom's chair, mindlessly flipping through the postcards from Erik.
Erik.
Mom had been seeing Gerald for several months before I met him and his son. When they decided they were serious enough to get us kids involved, Mom and I went to Gerald's house on a Friday night. We ordered take out pizza and watched movies and sat around talking.
I liked Gerald immediately. I knew he was in love with Mom and I'd never seen Mom look so happy. They were so cute, holding hands when they thought I wasn't looking.
I was barely 13 at that time, Erik was 15. He was laid back and easygoing. He was friendly to us and very likable, but he didn't hang out with us much that night. He came in and chatted for a bit, grabbed a 2 liter bottle of soda and 6 slices of pizza, made a joke to his dad about not staying out past curfew and disappeared out the back door.
I was mesmerized. Erik was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. At that point, I wasn't even all that interested in boys, they were kinda stupid and tended to smell bad. But Erik.
After pizza I watched maybe half the movie with Mom and Gerald and then I wandered out to the shop behind Gerald's house where I'd seen Erik go. I found him inside, up to his elbows in a motorcycle that was mostly scattered around him in small parts.
That night I fell in love for the first time in my life.
***
I looked down at the postcards in my hand, slowly running my thumb over the grain of the paper, smiling at my memories. Such sweet, innocent memories.
The tears welled in my eyes again but this time not for the loss of my parents. For my own loss. For how stupid I'd been. For how badly I'd fucked everything up.
It hadn't really occurred to me that when Mom and and Gerald got married it would mean that Erik was off limits. Somehow I immediately accepted Gerald as my father and even though I understood that made Erik my brother, it didn't count. He wasn't really my brother.
When my friends found out that I had a crush on him, though, they were disgusted, "Ewww, your brother? Com'on, Kelsy! That is so gross!" I got the message loud and clear.
Erik was my brother. No crushing allowed. So I pushed those feelings down deep and tried to go on with being a normal teenager.
I had boyfriends through high school, but they never lasted very long. No one could measure up to the standard my brother had set for them.
My step brother. I started insisting on making that distinction. It helped relieve some of the guilt I felt over my feelings which only intensified with the years of living with him.
Erik went from the adorable, gawky grease monkey with the floppy hair in his eyes that I had met that night in Gerald's shop to a tall, finely muscled, young man.
Erik and I shared a bond deeper than most step-siblings. Deeper than many actual siblings. He shared all his thoughts with me, his plans for the future. At times I thought he felt the same way as I did, a few times I even thought he might kiss me. But he would crack a joke or suddenly get up and walk away before anything happened.
He had moved out with a couple of friend
s my senior year. He still had that same motorcycle, it was a 1986 Honda Nighthawk 450. I will always remember that because I helped him rebuild it from that junked heap of scrap metal that was lying in pieces around him that first night to the beautifully restored bike that was his pride and joy till the day he left.
I never learned much about engines or cars or bikes in general, but to this day, I know that Honda and almost every bolt in it.
At 21 years old, my brother-- my stepbrother-- was the poster child for the iconic beautiful brooding bad boy that every girl wants and every girl's father wants to run out of town: boots, jeans, leather jacket, wearing his long curls tied back in a simple pony tail, his dark eyes hiding tempting secrets while his lips flashed deceptively innocent looking smiles.
Even now, my heart picked up its pace as the picture came into focus in my mind's eye.
If the wide eyed child I'd been at 13 had fallen in love with Erik when he was a gawky 15 year old, the sexually awakening 18 year old me wanted the just turned 21 year old bad boy biker Erik in the worst way.
Sitting there with the postcards in my hand, I felt myself blush. Part of me was amused at how foolish I'd been then. How simple I had thought the world was. It would all be just one of those silly things I could laugh off now, if it hadn't gone so terribly wrong. My heart fell again as I looked at the message on the postcard from Alaska printed in his thick, block handwriting, "Snowing in July. WTF? Tell everyone HI." No one ever told me "hi." In fact, finding these postcards was the first time I'd learned that he had stayed in touch with Mom and Dad at all since he left.