I Want to Die Alive

I've never prayed so hard for an afterlife; a space beyond the one we dwell and give our all to.
Death happens. I've lived with the thought that my dad watches over me and all my days. I've spent countless minutes directly speaking to him and feeling embarrassed for mistakes that I committed and sins that he would disprove of. He was the only existence I believed lived beyond me--but I never thought of him as living in Heaven--I simply thought of him as a spirit who checks in on me from time to time, appears when I call him and sends me earthly signs to show me he's listening.
Then my brother Charley passed away and the idea of the source of all life took hold of me and my scarcely pray-prayers. No matter the certainty of my faith that Charley is with God and freely existing in nothing but love, I have a desperate need to know we return to love. That all the days and years spent here aren't in vain and that we are here to live and learn.
My hope is that when Charley's soul passed through this life and left his body behind, he immediately felt love and release. Nothing ached, his heart felt serene and his mind wondered where his pain went; but it didn't matter because Jesus, he is being embraced by a love he never felt here on Earth nor in the words people spoke to him. And then he saw himself, his lifeless body and felt some sense of remorse, some sense of aggravation for leaving us as he did. For dying and causing the immeasurable pain I'm in, for leaving the girl he's known for his forever and the woman he came to know.
When I stepped into the circle of death, I covered my mouth and violently shook my head. I wanted nothing more than to believe that my whole life span was not dead. That the eternal stinging in my soul was a mistake. I turned away and screamed a primal scream- a scream that released a fight I will never win. One that pierced the sky and rang in my ears and one that the love Charley stood in, could feel. I felt him there with me, sorrowful and inaccessible, he watched me drop to my knees and pound the floor with my fist until it throbbed and my eyes bled with inconsolable tears. I screamed into the warm air of that moment knowing that it was done. This was his end and my beginnings of this life without him.

This last year has moved as slowly as possible. I would gladly have labor contractions for eternity than to live life without my brother. Grief, as I've stated before, is my dark passenger. It goes where I go and seldomly takes a backseat. But when it does, man, am I living with smiles in my heart and naked emotion spilling from my gut. I want to live and love and learn and take my lessons with me back to our source of all. I want to show Charley that I will continue to live with him in everything I do. I want to travel to all the places I want damnit, and seed the relationships that are worthy of life and self. I want to invest in the opposites of the ugly hearts Charley invested in (athough I believe everyone needs love), I want to live my life hoping that I can be just as proud of myself as he is, but more than anything, I have decided to live today and again tomorrow, and heck maybe the day after.
It's true..."one day at a time"...eventhough these are empty words that fall upon emptiness, it's the only way to live when you're hurting. And when I cry, it's perfectly acceptable. And when I isolate myself, it's understandable. And when I smile, please let me without expectation that I will smile all day. I can only hope that when I die, I will know that I lived for most of it.