D-Day

     In the middle of the day, just waiting to start doing work that needed doing, I sent my sister a text message. I can’t remember what it was about, but she told me to contact my mother. It was important.

     I call my mother right away. Thinking maybe she was hurt. Or she’d run away from her marriage. When I called, she was crying. I immediately thought of my brother, who was living with her. I thought he must be hurt. Maybe a car crash, and he was in the hospital. What she said next was the worst possible thing I could have imagined.

     “Son! Son, Dalton’s dead!”

     “…What?” I asked her slowly, not sure if I heard her correctly.

Hysterically, “He shot himself if the head! He’s dead!”

I hit the floor. Heavy sobs came easily. I screamed “NO!” into the receiver, hoping it was a cruel joke, or that by screaming, I could undo it all. I’m not sure how long I lay there, crying, screaming, punching the floor. It couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t. There’s no way my baby brother did that.

October 23, 2012, My world shattered.