Fears unlocked

"The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."

- G. K. Chesterton


"No."

The mummer of denial is calm as it slips from your lips.

"No-no-no-no-no-no-no."

Your strained arms convulse, jerking your brother's prone form back into your chest.

Sam's head flops and lands between your neck and shoulder. The solid weight is too familiar and pulls your mind back in time, to uncountable nights of comforting a frightened child, of endless naps in the back off the Impala.

Your hand cups the head of shaggy brown hair, the only thing of Sam's besides his eyes that have barely changed over the years. The only things that makes this huge lanky form identifiable as the small skinny boy that followed you around with endless questions and unwavering trust.

Despite the growth spurt Sammy had made between the age of fourteen and eighteen he had always been the kid you had spent your whole life taking care of.

That raw desperate panic you always felt over the years whenever Sam had gone missing from your watchful gaze seems to crash into you with a force a thousand times stronger than it had ever been before.

Because this time you can't follow.

There is no searching….no bringing back.

It's impossible to search for something that is no longer there.

The sudden desolation hits like a bullet to your chest; piercing and deadly. The force sucks your breath away, squeezes your lungs in a vice of razorblades. Your body convulses at the sharpness of reality, curving in and around the precious thing in your arms.

The old saying of putting all your eggs in one basket is an unbearably impossible realization to comprehend. Your whole life has been wrapped up in one person. One object.

Everything you were and are….everything you cared about is gathered together in one being….in one person.

And it now kneels pressed to your chest….bled out and gone….

"Oh God"

Flashes and words once said suddenly tear through your mind as an unconscious door, locked and buried deep, tears off its hinges; allowing all the wild fears you had of this moment ever happening to come barreling through, blood-thirsty and unstoppable.

You are young again, drowning in a responsibility too heavy for your small shoulders as you try to keep Sammy quiet, try to make him stop crying.

Finally you sit on the floor and pull the toddler into your small arms.

"Shhhh…." you whisper, your pulse rapid and eyes wide with panic.

And then you begin a rhythmic rocking.

Forward and backward…

Sam quiets.

Deep sobs turn into hitching breaths….

Forward and backward.

A few soft hiccups….

Forward and backward

And then a soft snore fills your ear.

Your shoulder and neck are wet with tears and your little arms ache with the effort of holding the toddler up, but in that moment you feel a rush of pride and love that's much too strong for your young years….

The memory strikes like a lightning bolt.

Bright and fast….the only thing visible, and then just as quick it's gone, leaving blindness and pain in its wake.