december 1, 2005

It was second period - chemistry, a subject I loathed, one he was enamored by (how??). Around 9am, a Thursday, the first day of December.

Someone at the classroom door. “We need Allie to come to the office, please. She needs to bring all of her stuff with her.”

Me thinking, “what the actual hell? I know I didn’t do anything wrong this time…”

Rick’s waiting in the office. Immediate hug. “Hey girl (his signature phrase), your dad called and asked me to pick you up and bring you home. I don’t know why, don’t know anything, that’s all he said.”

Weird, but okay, let’s go.

The seven-minute drive home feeling like twenty-seven minutes. In between trying to guess with Rick why we were going home, wondering why he was taking such a strange route. Past the flower shop, past Lange’s, a left onto Main Street… still wondering.

Somehow, the minute we pulled into the driveway, I knew. My feet touched the concrete and I already felt like lead.

I opened the front door, like I had a million times before, to a nightmare. To my very worst nightmare coming true right before me - across the looks on my parent’s broken faces, in the stillness in the air of what was usually the most lively, warm, comforting home, in the words that were spoken next.

Dad was standing right there. No more than three feet away. Mom directly behind him a bit, looking vacant, like a ghost, like hell (sorry mom - love you).

They were waiting for us. As a parent now myself, it was a wait I now realized probably almost killed them too. Another type of agony, another type of pain, knowing you’re about to deliver the worst news to your baby, about your very own baby, about her hero.

“Allie, honey, Zach’s gone.”

“What? No. No. No. no.”

“Yes Boo Boo, he had an accident and…”

“No!”

Nothing else but screams. My legs gave out and I crumbled to the floor. The tiny corner between the entryway closet and the front door became the only thing holding me up.

Rick behind me the entire time, still is, always has been.

Did you know broken-hearted screams are guttural? They’re intense and immediate. They come out of you without you even realizing. 

And for a long time, they didn’t stop. The corner held me as my parents and Rick tried to, too.

No. No. No. No. Zachie.

No. 

Scream after scream.

Somehow, eventually, someone picked me up off that floor. I don’t know who and I don’t know how.

Talk of Xanax. “We have to get her under control. We have to calm her down.”

Thank God, now, for the Xanax. For the temporary physical silencing of the screaming, from the shattered soul raging it’s pain out loud, letting no chord go unused, no fragment of the soul left unheard.

The only place of solace found was in his closet. The stupid figurines Michael and Sam gave him once still on the shelf. The clothes he didn’t take with him to Boston. The white Boys State t-shirt, the orange button down. Abercrombie, of course. The signature brown leather flip flops. The shoes left behind. Pieces of him. As close to his living soul as I would ever be again.

Call his phone again and again and again and again and again. Text him a thousand times. Nothing. Straight to voicemail. His voice cutting through the internal carnage like a butcher - “Hey, it’s Zach. Leave a message.” 

“COME BACK. COME HOME! No. This can’t be true! I need you, big brother.”

The house fills. The looks across all the people I love are like none I’ve ever seen before. Where is mom? Where’s dad? Where’s my big brother? There’s too many people in this house and none of them are the one who should be here.

The closet. Shut the door. Drown out the noise and the whispered voices and the cries. Sit with the things, just things. Hold them tightly and scream into them. Not him, but as close as I’ll get.

Eventually, sleep. Nightmares. Wake up on December 2nd without him. 

That was somehow seventeen years ago.

December 1st was seventeen years ago.

It feels like one year ago.

In the seventeen years since there’s been healing and rejoicing and graduations and marriages all around and babies galore all around and even more pain and more anger and more questioning. There’s been different houses, different towns and cities, different countries, even.

There’s been lives birthed and lives lost. There’s been new relationships and friendships and people who never knew him that know him. There’s been pee-your-pants laughter and more unimaginable pain and loss and suffering. There’s been moments of immense faith and moments of zero faith, nothing but a shell left.

There’s been so much joy it feels cruel, sometimes so much laughter it feels like the worst betrayal, a sort of gratefulness that’s only possible when you’ve stared at the end of life and, miraculously, risen back up.

There’s been so much life in the last seventeen years. In a way that feels impossible. And in another way I know it’s possible because of, and for.

I will never understand how years keep passing, how now more than half my life has been lived without the one who shaped it most.

December 1st comes again. Seventeen long years without Zach Morris, my hero, my big brother.

As his niece says, “I wish Uncle Zachie could come back from Heaven so he could blow out the candles on his cake.”

Me too, Roe, me too.