So Jamie comes to wake me up yesterday at about 8 in the morning, telling me that my dad has been calling my phone like crazy. So I call him and the first thing he says is "are you sitting down?" All the thoughts running through my head were "please let Eliott (who is my jack russel terrior) be ok". Thats when he said those 4 words that I will always remember: "you lost your brother".

I didn't even had to ask which brother. My brother Greg had been suffering through depression, health problems and now alcohol abuse. He would mix his pills and booze frequently at night and although the news was unexpected, it wasn't completly surprising either.

I still don't think that it has hit me yet though. When my mom died, it was easier b/c she had been dying for a while. I had been preparing to let her go for quite some time. But this....this can't be real, can it? I still can hear his voice so clearly and smell him and picture his facial expressions. He's not a dead person yet.

When someone dies that you know, they become something else. Sort of just a shadow of memories. You think back on those memories with a smile and they they blow away and scatter. But Greg doesn't seem like a shadow yet. He still seems solid. It's hard to believe there are only 5 of us now.

I haven't talked to him for a while. His last month was riddled with drunken phone calls to my dad and siblings, but never any to me. I'm happy about that. I'm happy that the last email I recieved from him wasn't a negative one, and I don't have any bad drunken memories to associate with him. He hadn't been home for almost a year b/c he said he was in so much pain. He only saw Marci once when she was 3 weeks old, but I sent him pictures all the time.

The mystery now is did he kill himself? Was this on purpose? My sister Maria got a suicide letter in the mail yesterday. It was post marked Tuesday and he died yesterday (Thursday). On Weds, she got an email that was rather light-hearted and contridicted the letter almost completly. He even spoke of "hope" and "light" and coming to visit. So everything is sort of out of place right now. It's hard to settle when you don't even know what happened.

Oh this all feels like a dream. It's hard for me to think about, but then again it slips into my mind so easily all the time as well. My dad, Maria and Tia went up to Philly to his house to help settle things. Me,Jamie, Julia,Anna,Michael,Aaron and the Ba, being the only ones left in town, went out for a huge meal at Red Lobster. It was SO refreshing. We laughed a lot and talked about stupid memories and expieriences. Greg came up a bit, but only happy things. It was just what I needed to help flush away the lump in my chest that has been sitting there, filled with the guilt I have for not calling him more or emailing him more or going to visit. He should of came home. Maybe if he would of came home and was around his family this wouldn't of happened.

There is a lot more confusion and conflict going on with this situation that I rather not go into right now. Emily is on her way over to hang out with me for a bit. I hope she brings Pepsi