13 Years Later

There are things that we think of every single day. What to eat. Chores. Pooping. Just regular things that come across your mind every day like normal folks. For the past 13 years there has not been a single day where the thought of my brother Kevin that died when I was 22 years old doesn't cross my mind.

It's not as romantic, thoughtful, or pleasant as it sounds. In movies when you hear people say they think of someone every day it sounds nice. I'm here to tell you that it isn't as sweet as it seems. It sucks and it hurts. Yeah, a lot of the time when I think of my brother I think of all the funny things he did or said. I think of hanging out with him. Teaching me how to drive at the age of 9. Watching wrestling. Waking up mad because his allergies would make him scratch his ear and clear his throat super loud.

But other times I just remember that he is dead.

Five Things I Learned From My Brother

Every year my birthday passes I think more and more of my late brother. I think of him every single day but on my birthday more so because I am two years older than he was when he died. To me that is hard as hell to accept and so weird. If I had died two years ago I wouldn't have met my friends beautiful daughter, hung out with cool people, or seen my best friend flying through the ranks of the library system while simultaneously making me stutardedly happy. .

For anyone that wants to know about my brother and how he passed away (the full version I've only told someone about once) click here. There are links to previous blogs about him as well. He was a cool ass dude and I learned a lot of things from him.

1969-2001 Part 3

Dante had always said that he would never go to a funeral. With all the people that had died in his family he had said that there was no reason to go. He went to this funeral. His mother actually called and told him so. As if she had to.
The funeral was held the Friday after his brothers death. Dante went to work that day to work a few hours before the funeral began. Even he knew this was odd but he had to feel some sense of normalcy. His coworkers walked around him like zombies, afraid to say anything to him.
“I’m the one going to a funeral” he said to them. “Stop acting weird!”
He went upstairs and put a suit on. His girlfriend came with him and they headed to his mothers house. They had moved in less than a month previously and Dante felt weird there. It was the first house they had moved into that he had not lived in. Everyone showed up and they arrived down the street to the funeral home. It was a place that Dante had seen hundreds of times but never thought he would visit.
Walking into the funeral home was strange to Dante. By instinct he decided to sit in the back as he would in church. Someone told him that family sits in the front. The front? He though. I have to sit right next to the casket?! Dante sat less than ten feet away from a beautiful blue casket with gold trim that was the new home for his brother. He noticed that one of the letters on the casket had fallen off and now said “Kev n Floyd Powers.” It bothered him.
As Dante was handed an obituary he noticed that everyone had written a poem or nice story about his brother. Would have been nice to have been included he thought to himself. He had no idea what the steps were and that he could’ve written something for his brother. He was also not included in the wake, something that bugs him to this day. After everyone was seated the casket was opened. People gasped and many others began crying loudly. Dante didn’t. He had cried enough.
“I barely got to know him!” his mother cried.
Really? Dante thought. You had 32 years to get to know him and you chose not to. You have known me for 22 years and you don’t know me. You don’t know any of us! Is death what it takes to get your attention?!
Dante looked at the body of his brother laying there and listened to his children speak about him. He listened to his friend speak abut him. He wish he had known about all of this. Dante felt alone and left out. At one point someone asked for everyone that had ever received something from Kevin. Everyone raised their hand. That’s how Kevin was.
Dante didn’t have a new view of his brother. That weren’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. He began drawing to be better than Kevin. Kevin got him watching wrestling. Kevin talked to him every week when no one else in his family would call to see how he was doing. Kevin gave Dante money to feed his Slim Jim and comic book obsession by having him iron his clothes. Kevin bought him a drawing board and a box full of supplies. Kevin took him to work once and spent the entire day with him. Kevin was like a father more than a brother. Kevin felt like a relative in a world where nothing did.
After the funeral, which Dante felt was far too short, they headed into a limo. This was Dante’s first time in a limousine and he figured that was weird. Of course it has to be under these conditions of course he thought to himself. They arrived at the Inglewood Cemetery. His mausoleum was not complete so they had to hold his body somewhere else until then. Dante, his brother Luther, his cousin Aziza, and a few of his brother Kevin’s friends he had not seen since he was 9 were there. A large elevator took them downstairs where he held Aziza’s hand. They wheeled the casket to a spot and elevated it and sealed it shut.
“You see all these flies?” his brother Luther said. “They eat dead people an’ shit.”
“You are so nasty” Dante told him. They arrived up top and everyone said their goodbyes. On the way to the car a girl ran up to Dante. She was followed by another one and a man.
“Are you Dante?” she asked.
“Yeah…” he replied hesitantly.
“I’m Consuela!” she shouted. He had not seen her since she was perhaps 7. The other girl was her sister, Vanessa. The man was his uncle Sonny Boy. They hugged and Dante left.
He got back to his mothers home and let the day sink in. His brother was dead. That’s the only thought that could run through his head. Would anything ever be the same again? Would he laugh as much anymore? Would family functions he would go to just to speak to his brother be the same? He had to wait and see. His father got drunk and yelled at by his mother and he was already beginning to see that nothing had changed.
A week or so later a second funeral was held. The mausoleum was complete and they were moving his casket there. A lot of the same people showed up and there were shirts made with Kevin’s face on them. His friend made a joke about the shirts and we all laughed. Dante has two of the shirts but has never worn them.
“He ain’t Tupac” he said.
After the funerals were done Dante was given most of his brothers clothes. And his car. Dante didn’t think he should take everything but his mother and brothers told him that he really should. That he had to. And he did. Even in death his brother was still giving to him.
Dante thinks about his brother daily. A few times following his death after seeing something funny on TV or cool while watching wrestling Dante would pick up the phone and start calling his brothers phone number. Then he’d stop. He’s dead. You cant talk to him.
Dante started laughing again eventually. He knew that he got his sense of humor from his brother and that the last thing he would want for him to become a miserable bastard. He still imagines a world where his brother lives. He wonders why God would take him away while leaving so many others alive. He wonders why a man that touched so many was gone while he still lived. He wonders about a lot. But he doesn’t wonder about how his brother felt about him.
He thinks of Kevin taking him to football games with friends when his other brother refused. He remembers his brother teaching him to drive as a child. He remembers his brother making him laugh during uncomfortable moments. He remembers his brothers goofy laugh. He remembers sharing a bed with his brother and being upset when Kevin’s allergies would make him click his throat and dig in his ear so hard the bed would shake. He remembers his brother taking him to get his haircut. He remembers his brother buying him “The Death of Superman” just like he said he would. He remembers comparing who had the worst job with his brother and winning by mentioning gay sex in the store. He remembers Kevin trying his best to teach his infant son how to call Dante Barney The Dinosaur. He remembers Kevin calling him Homer. He remembers wrestling his brother and never winning. He remembers just always wanting to be around his brother. He remembers his brother.
Kevin Powers died leaving behind his parents, three brothers, a sister, and two children. Dante is 2 years younger right now than when his brother was taken away. Kevin was one of those people that you either loved or hated but even if you hated him you would eventually love him. Its just the way he was. Kevin once told Dante “I’m gonna tell you ‘bout the birds, the bees, the black eyed peas, and gettin’ between a girls knees.” He never did but Dante believes he figured it out.

Well, except for the black eyed peas part.
Kevin F. Powers

Father, brother, son, uncle, newphew, cousin, friend.

1969-2001
I wish that I could hold you now. I wish that I could touch you now. I wish that I could talk to you. Be with you somehow. I know you're in a better place. Even though I can't see your face. I know you're smilin' down at me sayin' everything's okay. - I Wish

1969-2001 Part 2

Dante wasn’t known for being emotional. He had experienced plenty of people in his family dying. It was very common growing up. But this was different. This was his brother.
He broke down. He hadn’t cried since he was 9 when he last gotten beaten by his parents. Something in him shut down that day and he decided that he was just not going to cry anymore. He cried every tear he had missed out on or held back this day.
His mother saw him cry and broke down. She didn’t have to say anything. Just by her look he knew what had happened. This wasn’t a case of his brother being hurt. His brother wasn’t missing. He was dead. He was not coming back. It hit him harder than anything he had ever felt in his life. Dante wanted to stop crying and ask questions. He couldn’t. His aunt began crying again. Dante actually felt bad. For some reason his tears made everyone else cry and all he wanted was to just stop them from crying.
“What happened?” he was finally able to ask.
“He had a heart attack” someone said.
Heart attack? Heart attack?! How in the fuck could he have had a goddamn heart attack?! Fat people have heart attacks. People who smoke for decades have heart attacks. People who don’t take of themselves have heart attacks. His brother who had lost weight, played sports, and didn’t smoke or drink did not have heart attacks! There must be something else going on he thought to himself. They don’t know what they’re talking about.
His other brother Jaron came in and they both cried. Dante had to get out of the hospital. Someone asked if he wanted to see the body. The body? He wasn’t even his brother anymore. He was this thing that had to be cut open, looked at, and then discarded. Dante hoped that this was just a stupid dream and that he would wake up in bed. He had just talked to his brother last week. Every Monday they would talk about wrestling and work. Just catch up. This was Tuesday and he had not called his the night before. Guilt started to build.
Outside his father had run out of cigarettes and wanted to head to the store. His brother joined them to the walk to the store. At first no one said a thing. Nothing had sunk in yet.
“This doesn’t feel real” his brother Jaron said.
“Yes, it does” Dante said. This was the most real thing he had ever felt in his life. After getting back Dante went and sat back down in the room with his mother and the woman and man he didn’t know.
It turns out that the man was a pastor that lived in the same apartment complex with Kevin. Apparently the pastor’s son found Kevin laying on the front lawn unconscious but alive. Kevin lived on the second floor. He was rushed to the hospital. The story as Dante was told was this.
While ironing for work and eating sunflower seeds Kevin had a heart attack. He stumbled to his balcony perhaps to catch his breath and fell over the side where he was found. Dante later found out that the year previously that he had suffered a smaller heart attack. He never told Dante about this.
Dante’s girlfriend showed up and Dante began to cry again. He explained that he could go and look at his brothers body. He just couldn’t do it. She cried as well. She had never seen Dante cry before and it caught her off guard. His cousins asked to look at his drawings. They knew that Dante was the closest to Kevin and that he would take this very hard. Eventually they left the hospital.
In the car Dante tried to control his emotions. Sadness would quickly turn to anger which then turned to guilt and then spin its way back to anger. It was a rollercoaster he could not get off of fast enough. Dante had not seen his now oldest brother at the hospital. He had left before Dante got there. Later that night he called.
“Hey” his brother Luther said to him. “This is fucked up…”
“I know” Dante said. “He shouldn’t be dead…” Dante said as he began to cry again.
“I gotta go” his brother said while breaking down and hung up.
Dante’s girlfriend began talking about her grandmother and how much her death affected her. Your grandmother? Dante thought to himself. How can you compare your 80-something year old grandmother that you never wanted to visit or talk to with my 32 year old brother that died suddenly of a heart condition that I didn’t know about? There is no comparison!
Dante knew it was wrong to think this way and felt guilty for it. He called his job and explained what happened and that he wouldn’t be coming in to work the next day. They told him to take as much time as he needed. How much time does it take to get over something like this? A week? A Month? A year? A lifetime?
Who knows?

1969-2001 Part 1

It was your average day at a porn shop. Same freaks, different day as it was. Dante sat at the front counter bored out of his mind. He placed his Wizard magazine down and looked at the security cameras. It was never a good idea to keep your eyes off the camera for too long in a place like this.
After a while he started to feel strange. Not a bad strange but just…different. He called for an employee to come to the front counter and asked if he could leave. He didn’t ask really. He knew that he was leaving in about an hour anyway. At this point he was done with everything he needed to do. The strange feeling he had would not leave so he headed home, conveniently located upstairs from where he worked. He walked upstairs, laid down, and fell asleep immediately.
He woke up with the phone ringing. He thought that maybe it was his job asking him to come in for an employee who had not shown up. He looked down at his pillow and saw a large ring of sweat. He answered the phone and it was his mother. She sounded worried.
“Get to the hospital” she said. “Kevin got hurt.”
“Okay” Dante said. “Which hospital is he at?” Dante checked his wallet and saw how much money he had left. Enough for a cab ride. His girlfriend was at work still so that wasn’t an option. I need to get a car he thought to himself.
“Daniel Freeman” his mother said and hung up.
Dante did not know how seriously the situation was. He figured that while working at his new job that his brother did something stupid and got hurt. Dante got dressed, called a cab, and called his girlfriend to tell her about what happened and to meet him there if she could.
In the cab ride Dante talked to the driver. He joked that his brother got hurt at work. The driver said that his brother could get a lot of money if he got hurt while working. Dante agreed and said that the money could be used to ay him back for the cab ride all the way to Inglewood.
Dante showed up and saw a few cousins he had not seen in a while. That’s weird he thought to himself. I haven’t seen her or him in a while. Dante saw his father standing outside smoking and headed to an entrance. He saw one of his cousins and said hello. He had his drawing book in his hands and figured that he’d be in the waiting room for a really long time bored.
Dante entered a room where his mother, aunt, and two people he did not know were sitting. As soon as he looked at his mother he knew something terrible had happened.
He had no idea.