I Swear You Will Be Fine

I found myself doing something I haven’t in a long time. I started making plans for the future again. Don’t ask me about next year, but I can tell you about next week. It no longer consists of the bare minimum, like some friends coming over and as little university as possible. Anyone who heard my schedule would think I’m busier than most final-year students. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point, I started making plans for the rest of my life. Without Josh.

We’re well past the 6-month mark now. And I think I’ve gotten more used to not expecting to see Josh every day. Although frankly, I avoid looking into his empty bedroom as much as I can. I’ve cried for 213 of the last 215 days, but I can predict when it’s coming now. Sobbing is now rarely witnessed by others. I’ve begun to stop looking for Josh to roll his eyes with me at our family. I sometimes just look as the sky instead, to make sure he’s seeing their ridiculousness with me.

But then something happens, and it feels like I’m losing my younger brother all over again. I was sorting through all the clothes in my room and found two black jumpers I didn’t recognise. They were Christmas presents for Josh last year. He had tried them on and agreed they suited him. He never got to wear them. I didn’t get the satisfaction of knowing my younger brother still liked my taste. They had been buried in a storage box to preserve what little smell they carried of him. They don’t smell like Josh anymore.

I’ve gotten more used to trying to talk through Josh via signs. I know a lot of people may think I’ve lost it when I try to develop a 6th sense, but I can’t wait that long to talk to Josh again. Friends help me look for purple flowers wherever I go. I heard a song from Just Dance on the Xbox that Josh loved at a club, and took that as a sign that he didn’t mind me dancing. I’m sure he did mind me dancing embarrassingly, but he can deal with that.

I still feel like life owes us something. Apart from my Mum, God took away the person I loved most. Surely bad things can’t happen anymore. And yet, life continues to go on. Exceptions stop being made (often rightly so), and the more we venture into the outside world, we remember that no one knows this massive loss we’ve experienced. Rude people continue to be rude, and frankly, I feel like we could be rude if we wanted to too (surely it’s justified). But we’re not. We’re the last living bits of Josh on earth and I don’t think I ever saw my brother ever be rude to a stranger. The same couldn’t be said about how we spoke to each other.

It used to feel like we were waiting for something. I have zero idea what. Maybe it was all the difficult days, like our birthdays and Josh’s 21st. Now I think it’s waiting to see him again. In the first few weeks after Josh passed, Mum said it was a life of misery for us now and I very much agreed. Within days, she called me again and said it couldn’t be. Josh wouldn’t be happy with that. He’s finally happy and not in pain. He would hate to see us so sad and devastated for the rest of our lives.

So now I think it’s a lifetime of waiting to be with him again. Where I can turn my head to the side instead of to the sky to see him roll his eyes with me. And I’ll (try to) fill life with things he would’ve been proud of so I don’t get scolded when I see him again. Can’t wait to be eye-to-eye with you again Josh. Although you would argue that our height difference means we haven’t been eye-to-eye for a very long time.

Love, Jess