Empty Spaces 

I’m standing at the front door hoping to see your slow steady gait heading home. Your pockets are littered with coins for no good reason, that faithful Slurpee in your right hand. You left before I could see what you were wearing. I wonder if it’s a Wizards or Nationals hat today. Which loud t-shirt is likely matching? I’m sure you’re wearing jeans and they’re sagging. I’m waiting for you. Glancing down to my left, she’s waiting too. Sasha’s erect ears and tiny tail standing at attention in anticipation of your arrival. Her beautiful bold eyes steady on your usual path. She believes you’ll soon be here. We wait. 

You’re not coming. You will never come home again. Brokenhearted from my search for you in the empty spaces you once occupied, I walk away. Sasha refuses to break her stare after I’ve summoned her to join me at the nearby dining table. It’s been months since God called you Home, dear Brother. Yet I can barely reckon with reality that you’re gone. You used to be here. Now you aren’t. It seems unfair. But I won’t go there. Because I once had you here, filling space and emptiness, and that’s so much better than to have never had you. 

When you were last here, the world carried on. With you gone, it still moves about. But nothing feels normal because nothing is normal. Things are occupying space but now there’s overwhelming emptiness. I miss you in all your uniqueness, missing your thereness. In the midst of mourning you, I’m grieving all of you: Mom, Dad, and Stan too. Your loving faces no longer in familiar places. My heart just breaks. At times I stare into space, hoping for a glimpse of your transfiguration. Having yet to appear causes my heart to ache repeatedly. I just want each of you near. And not in the customary way I’ve heard proclaimed, they are always with you. Frankly, those words don’t carry an ounce of cure for the pain I feel. 

I don’t know what to do with the void. You each left a hole which cannot be filled. I suppose I must learn how to live, again; when the pain is unbearable, when not a soul on this earth makes it better. Yet, thanks to God within and each of you, I have a road map to help me navigate my way through these empty spaces. Ultimately, I pray, leading me Home to loving familial faces.