120 Days

Before

The postcards haven't been touched in years. The corners have been bent but they arrived that way in the mail. There's a smell clinging to them as if they had been stuffed into an old book. Whenever I pick up or shake the shoebox, I can hear them shuffling around inside.

I got a postcard almost every week. And whenever Thomas couldn't find a postcard, he would send a letter. He never flaunted his ability to travel around the world. He didn't post it on social media or send me texts with pictures of where he was. No, he always sent me a postcard.

I would look forward to opening the mailbox. Some weeks I would get pictures of different cities in France followed by cities across Europe. Then one day, they started to appear from Asia. He sent me cards from the Himalayas and letters containing polaroid pictures of the Buddhist temples and monks of Tibet. Then I started to receive cards from Australia and many other parts of the Oceania Thomas felt he needed to go to. I think deep down, he loved writing them and loved knowing I was back home supporting his life decisions. He sent me so many postcards and letters I could literally map out where he was almost all the time.

They stopped in South America. I received some from Tierra del Fuego and Machu Picchu. For a few days, there was nothing in the mail and I thought that maybe they had just gotten lost. But then we got the phone call...It wasn't anyone's fault, really. Just a freak-of-nature accident that no one saw coming, including myself.

People always say grief overcomes you, but denial is what hit me the hardest. Especially because I was getting ready for my senior year in high school just when we got the news. I had a great junior year where I hit a stride with my friends. I was able to drive which meant hanging out at my friends' houses. Sleeping over on the weekends. Pizza party nights with glasses of wine we would steal from the top shelves in our parent's pantries. I had my first kiss with my crush during the summer. Honestly, the summer leading up to senior year was one of the best summers of my life.

Until the phone call just a few weeks before school was starting up again. I didn't believe it at first. I just couldn't bring myself to believe it because it wasn't true. Thomas was fine. He's traveled across the world with a backpack and worn-out shoes. He told me he traded his sleeping mat for some Jesus sandals when he wanted to climb a rocky slope at the bottom of the Himalayan mountains. There's no way something happened to him other than food poisoning from eating some bad ceviche.

I don't think I truly believed it up until the funeral. My parents had to pay so much to fly his body over, and yet I still couldn't believe it. I could just imagine going to the airport to pick him up in with his overly grown hair and stubby cheeks.

It was the casket that reeled me into reality. An open casket where it looked like my brother was sleeping peacefully. He was pale and his hair had been done. A part of him look almost angelic as he lay with his arms over his chest. I half expected him to wake up and reveal it was all a prank. But that moment broke me.

People talk about slow transformations, but this wasn't slow. I instantly clammed up and became a shell of a person. Someone I still can't recognize when I think about it hard enough. I can admit to it because I was conscious of it happening to me and yet, I didn't care. My friends tried to reach me for a while before they gave up. My family tried harder and longer. Nothing really helped because even if a little bit of me could forget, I would still end up in Thomas' bedroom. Standing in the middle of the room, staring at his bed where we used to play the Nintendo together or sneak candies that my mom didn't want us to eat. I'll walk to his shelf where he had little figurines of Gladiators and lions. Or I'll open his closet and try to remember what he smelled like.

We used to fight when we were growing up. In the kitchen, we always had to have "equal" slices of cake. Or we'd argue about what to watch on TV. He always wanted Cartoon Network and I wanted to watch Disney Channel. We would settle and end up watching Nickelodeon. But then we slowly became best friends. He even started inviting me to hang out with his friends in high school. Always proud of introducing me as his baby sister and making sure that Mom and Dad never caught me whenever I did something mischievous. He was the best brother in the world...