So Far Away

When my mom announced she was pregnant with me, she learned around about the same time that my older sister (her first born) was also pregnant with her first grandchild.  Though she was shocked, they carried on in their pregnancies, my sister got married to her boyfriend, and on my sister's 16th birthday, I made my appearance.  Just six weeks later, my nephew was born, making me an aunt before I'd ever really smiled my first smile.  In fact, I'd only been out of the hospital a week or so due to birth complications so I was still brand new to the family.  Suddenly, they were blessed with two newborns  so what did they do?   The only logical thing.  We shared cribs and playpens.  We had matching pacifiers and bottles.  Whenever my sister brought my nephew over, we were treated as twins and it should have stayed that way.   Unfortunately, fate has a way of screwing things up.

On the way home from a check up (I'm pretty sure, if any of my family reads this and I'm wrong, feel free to correct me) my sister's mother-in-law drove their car into the path of an oncoming train.  Everyone in the car, by all rights, should have died and no one did.  This is proof to me that God really does watch out for people, even the ones who don't believe in Him.  Though everyone was hurt pretty bad, my nephew, Bobby, was crippled.  The infant car seat, built to protect him, smashed the back of his head in, crushing his brain.  He survived but we'll never know for sure how much pain and suffering he was in for the next 23 years of his life.

You see, when I was learning to walk and he should have been toddling beside of me, Bobby never got to set his feet on the ground.  He was bound to a bed, a chair, a wheel chair all of his life.  No doubt he would have towered over my 4'11 frame if he had been able to stand, yet I carried him on my hip, because he weighed no more than the average toddler.

When I was learning to baby babble, speak full sentences, give speeches, Bobby struggled to get out simple words.  He could say "bite", "Bobby do good", "Tickle", and on the rare occasion, "Mama."  At one time, before he lost some capabilities to complications, he could say "Nik" which was an abbreviated form of my name.  I used to almost cry hearing it so I can imagine the emotion my sister felt on the few times that she got to hear him say "Mama."  Usually it was screamed in anger and frustration, just like most toddlers do.

While I was learning colors and shapes and watching cartoons, Bobby was left in a sightless, blind world.  He never got to see the colors of the rainbow or have a favorite cartoon character.

Things didn't go the way they should have for Bobby and me.  We should have been able to play tag in the front yard.  Instead, I came in to baby sit him and played patty-cake.  We should have been competing for the best grades and awards in school.  Instead, he was confined to one room in the school house and never learned anything.  Our mothers should have prom pictures of us looking embarrassed yet excited.  He should have been there to see me walk across the stage and I should have been there for him too. He should have been there when I walked down the aisle to the man of my dreams and I should have gotten to see him date the woman of his.  Knowing that he could have experienced all of these things with me, but a cruel accident kept him from it and, finally, took him from us way too young leaves me feeling like a part of me needed to do things twice as well, remember and cherish every moment twice as much so that I was living my life a little bit better and more for him.  

Bobby was the glue that held my sister's family together when nothing else could, kept her from falling apart, and everyone knew that.  What they didn't know what how much he kept me here, grounded in reality and not willing to give up, because if I didn't experience life for him when he couldn't, who else would?  He gave me a purpose when I had none as a teenager.  My only regret is that I let life keep me from being as close to him in the few adult years that he had.  I started avoiding him, resenting him, and now I'm left with a void that a closeness to any other individual will never fill.

"Plans of what our futures hold,
Foolish Lies of Growing Old
It seems we're so invincible,
The truth is so cold,
A final song, a last request,
A perfect chapter laid to rest,
Now and then I try to find,
A place in my mind,
Where you can stay, stay awake forever"-

"So Far Away," Avenged Sevenfold.