Word Count: 1501
Summary: A brother, a casket, and the echos of the past. [Character death - mentioned]
Disclaimer: I don't own Crossing Jordan or the characters.

It's strange how someone can be gone for years and yet feel as close as yesterday. And though many years were lost because of my problems and him being done taking care of everything for me, I remember some moments fondly. The way he would tie my shoes before school, taking his time to make me laugh even though we were running late. Making smiley faces on my food because he knew I liked it. Reading me a bedtime story because if not him, then who?

Sitting on the kitchen table, I stare at my son. Fifteen years old, in so many ways a splitting image of his mother.

He smiles at me as he enters the room, telling me we need to put toilet paper in the list of groceries because we are all out. For just a second, I return to a house far away from the one I'm in right now, telling my brother something about the grocery list too. How have times changed?

He walks to the tap, leaning down over the sink and tilting his head sideways to drink the water dripping from the tap. When he lifts his head back up, there's water dripping from his cheek that he wipes with his shirt sleeve. Once more, I return to that house, my brother doing the same thing as he tells me I need to pay attention to math class and do my homework on time.

I hear my father's voice telling him to use a glass, and my brother laughs because everyone knows he will never do that.

"Too much work." My brother used to say. The same person who more than once told me that the water from the hose was fresher than any other. However, I always suspected that was true because we only drank it after we were playing and were tired and thirsty. Never again did I drink water so cool as that one.

My son is now telling me about his schoolwork, and I listen to him, feeling too much like my older brother all of a sudden, listening to me ramble on about my problems as if he didn't have his own. I now wonder who he told his problems to.

Maybe the biggest problem was why my father wasn't the person who I told all of this, but my older brother was my father and mother and did everything he could to make sure I didn't go through what he did.

So much work, to have me screw up so badly in the end.

My son then left the room, the smile on his face the same as my brother's all those years ago before anything went really wrong, and he was the carefree man everyone always saw him as.

My mind goes to the day I received the news that as the son and brother of a police officer, I had always feared. When I received the news of my father's death, my brother had been there with a comforting arm around me, so different from earlier that day when he and I had fought over something trivial I don't even remember.

The day I received the news my brother had passed away in the line of duty, I didn't have my brother's comforting arm around me. I was all alone, in a bar in a city no one knew my name. Long had been the days my brother would've bailed me out of whatever situation I had gotten myself into and I was now truly learning the meaning of being on my own.

That phone call though, taught me the difference between being on my own and being completely alone.

His funeral had been the hardest thing I ever did in my life. Any fight I got into, all the detox, arguments, and even losing both my parents, couldn't even begin to compare to what I felt at that moment. It was as if all those things were happening at the same exact time. I saw all his friends, people he worked with that I had had the privilege of meeting once, were all there saying goodbye to their friend. His girlfriend was fighting a losing battle with the tears I once had shed for my father and struggled to do the same for the man who raised me.

I remember seeing him in a casket, a mirroring image of a few decades ago of our father in the same exact position. The air was thick with grief, its weight settling on my chest and making it hard to breathe. The casket, just like our father's, was draped with the flag of the country both had died serving. They had both sacrificed their lives serving our country.

The room was full, yet I felt more alone than I ever had in my life.

As I approached the casket, I struggled more and more to breathe, the grief making me want to leave and pretend he was still alive and just pretending I didn't exist. But then I see him, his hand folded neatly, his face still. I had seen him not long before for Christmas, so full of life as he used to be in the old house, in the town we had left a while before. I reached for him, wishing and hoping he would return to tie my shoes, make me laugh, pull me out of all the trouble I've ever gotten into.

My hand trembling, brushing against the polished wood of the casket. It didn't feel real. None of it did.

The eulogies were beautiful, each a testament to the man he was. Had been. Everyone spoke of his bravery, his kindness, his sense of duty and justice. I learned that day that you can feel your own heart shatter, mine doing so as they all shared their memories of him, all they now had and could never relive.

When it was my turn to say goodbye, I could barely move. Approaching the casket one last time, I wondered what could be said that would do that man any justice. All the memories started flashing through my brain, but I couldn't think of a single thing to say. I'm sure I said some things, though I can't remember now what they were. My vision blurred with tears that I didn't want to shed because once they started, I knew they wouldn't stop.

I wanted to be strong, like he always was, but in that moment, I couldn't be. I crumbled. I broke down in front of everyone, but most importantly, in front of him. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn't help it. He had been my rock, my everything, and now he was gone. I felt like I couldn't be there for him just like he had always been there for me.

I remember the procession after the service, a line of cars stretching further than I could see. The sound of bagpipes echoed through the streets, their mournful tune only deepening the ache in my chest. I walked with the others, following the casket as it was carried to the gravesite, the weight of loss bearing down on me with every step.

At the cemetery, the sight of the freshly dug grave hit me like a punch to the gut. The finality of it all was too much to bear. As the honor guard performed the gun salute, I flinched with each shot, each one a cruel reminder that this was real, that he was really gone.

I remember his girlfriend placing a single white rose on the casket, her hands trembling as she did. I wanted to say something to her, to offer some kind of comfort, but what could I have said? We were both lost in our grief. And I was sure that at the moment, she was thinking the same thing as I was. It was the wrong brother.

After everyone else had left, I stayed behind, unable to leave him there alone. I knelt beside the grave, my fingers tracing his name etched into the stone. I spoke to him then and told him all the things I couldn't say at the funeral. I apologized for all the mistakes I'd made, for not being the brother he deserved. I promised to do better, to make him proud.

Years later, as I now sit at this kitchen table in a house with my family, I'm glad I can say I'm no longer alone in the world. I feel miserable though, because in a city away from this one is buried the man I wish could've seen my life now. I hope he would be proud of who I became. I wish he had met my wife. I wish he had met my son. I wish he had met the man I became.

I wish he was here to see just how fantastic of a job he did.

I wish he was here.

The End

I drew inspiration from "A Drink of Water" by Jeffrey Harrison for this piece. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's bittersweet how the mannerisms of people who never knew each other can still resonate and endure over time. And honestly, reading it for the third time, I still couldn't get this story out of my head and had to write it.

Hope everyone likes it.