Coffin

second day, Aaron, in his shock, had left home after breakfast to go to the library. He wanted to just shut himself in and take his mind off Jack by throwing himself into reading and learning. Learning had always been his passion. He had always excelled in school, was a straight A+ student, and on the honor roll.

  But his attempt at studying didn't take. It was too hard to push out of his mind, and he found himself leaving the library far earlier than he intended. He’d had a bit of a breakdown on the way home. He couldn't control his sobs, and had ran all the way home, people looking towards the direction of the running, sobbing boy in looks that were a mixture of confusion and worry.

  He had gone back to begging that night. Praying that God would take mercy on him.

  (If God was there.) Just one little exception. Just please give Jack back. He had learned his lesson. He would never take for granted what he had ever again.

  But it was not to be so.

  The next few days, he was forced to witness a rather horrifying ordeal. His mom and dad having to do all the preparations for the funeral.

  It was the most sadistic things he'd ever seen, Aaron thought. They made the loved ones of the recently deceased work their butts off doing all the funeral arrangements themselves. Well, he guessed he understood the logic of that. It was something that really needed to be customized by the family. It was the very last thing they would ever be able to give Jack. But it was still, to Aaron, basically taking the worst tragedy of their lives and then having it literally SHOVED in their faces, and not just shoved, but having their faces rubbed right into it for days immediately following the event.

  The funeral had come far too fast. It struck Aaron today that less than a week ago, everything had been just fine and he’d still had his brother. Another strong feeling of pain each time that thought occurred to him.

  First was the viewing. Aaron hadn't thought he could have ever gone through with it. Seeing, after all, made it final.

  But he did go through with it. He did see. The morticians had done a really good job with Jack’s body. Aaron’s body had hitched up as soon as he looked in and saw Jack, first time since that last fateful moment when he had been departing the front door of their home. He’d felt an overwhelming amount of indescribable emotions. The thing that struck him was that Jack had looked so peaceful lying there. But Aaron didn't want him to be lying there. Aaron wanted him to get up and have their family be whole again.

  But his brother wouldn't move.

  He was very surprised he didn't cry the entire time at the viewing. But he would cry later that night. And the next morning, especially, which was today.

  Oh, yes. The crying was most definitely not over by a longshot.

  The service seemed to drone on and on.

  It was a very good service, but to Aaron felt it was like another exercise in torture. But yet he didn't want it to be over, because it being over meant Jack's coffin would be taken outside and lowered into the ground. Forever.

  He thought about Jack's body, lying in that casket deep under the Earth, slowly rotting away, turning green, crumbling to dust, while he grew up and went on with his life.

  Alone.

  It was too much to bear.

  Everyone got to go around and view Jack one final time. Mother, father, and Aaron were the very last ones to get to do so. They were the ones who got to close the casket.

  Kurt, his dad, closed it, as mother and he stood and watched. As the lid came down and blocked Jack from view permanently, it was the hardest thing Aaron had ever been through in his life.

  Them going outside, having yet another torturous small service before the casket began to be lowered into the ground, everyone singing Amazing Grace...

  Aaron hated that song now. He never wanted to hear it again.

  Jack's coffin went into the ground, and then everyone had to leave as the gravediggers came to begin shuffling the dirt into the hole.

  Then everyone went back to their house to have a reception.

  Terrance had provided a great deal of the refreshments. There was a table with a large buffet of food that Aaron didn't want to eat but ate it anyways because he was starving, and he didn't want to enjoy because he felt like he shouldn't be able to enjoy anything in the world ever again, but yet he could not stop himself from enjoying it anyways.

  The whole reception just felt wrong. It felt wrong because Jack wasn't there. Aaron couldn't remember the last time he'd been at some kind of event like this where Jack wasn't there with him to get them into some kind of major trouble. The twisted part was they were here now because Jack wasn't with them any longer.

  Aaron didn't want to be here because there was no Jack and all those damned pictures they had posted everywhere reminded him of Jack.

  But he didn't want to go upstairs to his empty room because he would be faced even further with the loneliness and emptiness that his brother was gone. He didn't want to go for another walk because that, too, would remind him his brother was gone.

  There was simply no way to win.

  The house felt so empty without Jack. So lifeless. It was like a light that had once been there had gone out and there was no way to rekindle it.

  People sent so many damn flowers. Aaron didn't understand why people needed to send so many damn flowers. Just what were they supposed to do with them all, anyways? As if it couldn't have been rubbed in anymore enough, now the whole fricking house had to smell like the funeral parlor.

  Days passed.

  Aaron returned to school. It felt weird going by himself. It felt weird coming home by himself. It felt weird that Jack wasn't at home. It felt weird that Jack wasn't available to do anything with him ever again.

  Aaron now had the private bedroom he’d always dreamed of. Except now he didn't want it at all.

  The depression wouldn't go away for a long time. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months.

  Terrance got his wish. Jack and Aaron would never terrorize his house or his yard or pull another prank on him ever again. Jack was dead and Aaron didn't have the will.

  Life turned into a blur. A very lonely blur.

  True, Aaron still had friends, so he wasn't truly lonely, but Jack had left an empty void that would never be filled.

  Everything reminded Aaron of Jack.

  The missing bed and the more spacious immaculately clean bedroom. Going to school alone. Coming home alone. Hanging out with his and Jack's friends, without Jack. Him and mom going out and doing things together without Jack. The eerie silence of the house. Waking up each morning and those horrid words immediately being on his mind.

  Jack's dead.

  One thing that Aaron realized he missed most of all was that he no longer had someone to talk to or be there for him whenever he needed. Oh, sure, there was mom and a whole host of other people who promised "if they ever needed anything", but it wasn't the same. Only after Jack's death did Aaron realize just how close he really had been to his brother.

  Christmas came. It was the worst Christmas of his life. He had been doing relatively well in the last few months leading up to it. He hadn't cried that much. But Christmas really hit him hard. The presents were just for him. Only for him. For him and no one else. And he hadn't gotten Jack anything even though he’d wanted to but he couldn't because Jack was dead and he would always be dead and there would never be another Christmas with Jack and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Thoughts of suicide never crossed Aaron's mind. He was not the type of person. Yet, the thought of having to go through the rest of his life without Jack felt unbearable.

  He and his mother had been going through counseling, and it helped somewhat, but it didn't alleviate the pain. Not even a little.

  The New Year came around.

  From there, the anniversary of Jack's death, May 21st, eventually rolled around.

  It was another strongly emotional day, but it didn't hurt as bad as the day had exactly a year ago. Aaron realized for the first time that day that he ha
dn't been waking up lately with those horrifying words on the tip of his mind.

  He still had dreams about Jack. Those were the days, following the dreams, that he got the most emotional. His favorite dream had been the one where God had sent Jack back because Jack was driving him and everyone up in heaven crazy. "God" suspiciously looked an awful lot like Terrance.

  The next year was not as hard as the first. Aaron began to adjust. It was a horrifying adjusting. But slowly, it began to happen. Life had changed completely. Aaron would never again be the same person.

  This year he found the will in himself to go to the cemetery on a regular basis. He would sit in front of Jack's gravestone and talk to him.

  These talks became a ritual, happening at least two or three times a week. Aaron was still sad, but it made him feel slightly better. He would talk, he would cry, but at least he could be there, if only in the slightest way, he was there with his brother.

  Year three came around. Aaron stopped going to the cemetery. He felt kind of guilty about that. But his life was getting busy. He was starting to focus. He had his whole future ahead of him. He was excited about it. Not to say Jack's absence still didn't leave an empty hole in his heart. He would never truly recover.

  His brother had started fading away a bit in his mind. It wasn't that Aaron was forgetting Jack. Not at all. It's just that Jack was becoming less of a real person and more of an image in his head. With each passing day, he wasn't entirely sure if the Jack he was remembering had been the