When I first experienced grief, I didn’t know what coping was for me. I would look around and i’d see most of my adult figures going the “hush” route: where you sensitize the subject to the bone and make it sacred. I was nine, and not being able to discuss my feelings without making whomever breakdown was pressuring. As you can imagine it didn’t end well, I'd cry at the thought of death and I would fear watching movies or tv shows that had a focus on death. It was a mental solitary confinement; a sealed door. Five years later, I lost another brother to the same topic. Gun Violence. Only this time, he wasn’t the victim, he was the perpetrator. After seeing the strain it put on our family the first time, it’s beyond me how you could go out and commit the same thing. Regardless, It was hard to go on from. But when you're already lost in a tunnel with an unknown amount of length: you can either hush and dim, or you can mumble and brighten. I chose the latter. My gateway of mumbling, and many others, is jokes. It’s a very niche coping mechanism. But, just like I didn’t fight the dimmers, you can’t fight the bright-ers. On my journey, I encountered a teacher who told me that if I did truly lose a brother to GV to make jokes surrounding it, and then to also say that I’m aware of the weight and seriousness of the topic, is hypocritical. Being stuck in adrenaline, I kept repeating “We’ve lived two completely different lives,” forgetting the real meat of my point. Stuck listening to a broken record, who already doesn’t have much street credit and now looks like a deer in headlights. Collected and advanced by time; I admit, it still upsets me. “We’ve lived two completely different lives, the way I cope is going to be different from you, because you weren’t 9 being put in a box after your brother was murdered.” I tell myself repeatedly in my head, you don’t need that teacher or anyone else to tell you that your coping methods are valid. Stuck in my head, I fade into reality; that’s not what I said. What did I say? “I don’t need you to tell me what is and isn’t funny. I don’t need you to tell me what to do and not to do. I don’t need you to tell me your textbook educated opinions on grief.”

Warn-In shoes, diamond earrings, old picture frames, bedding and clothes. Useful articles that are useless to me. Sealing the envelopes that contain pictures of my no-contact husband, Darrell. I think of the dress I wore at the wedding. Not that wedding, but my first one. We were young, I was barely in to my 20s. When he made the head strong decision of war, I knew it would be trouble. But his eyes, his heart, I wanted it all. We celebrated the last few days we had together with dinners. But the night he went away I wish I would have stopped him. Stalled him and popped the tires to his car. Flashing back to now, I know it’s coming soon. Some may fear, but I excite. I imagine seeing his eyes, feeling his heart. That’s nothing but comfort.