7:00 AM, Lambert to Bradley. Add in a two hour layover in O'Hare to delay the pain.
Connecticut and death have gone hand in hand since I can remember. I've been to the Constitution State over fifty times, but only twice when there were leaves on the trees. The state is forever the same to me: cold, barren, lifeless. The Constitution State: dead, like the men who penned it.
The family hasn't been together since J passed. We had been preparing ourselves for the inevitable; Red, my great uncle, was given three months to live, nine months back. Somehow, he's still here. Now they're saying this will be my grandmother's last Thanksgiving. We've been prepared for this for a long time: everyone has their funeral suit on standby, ready to be donned at a moment's notice. But nobody had expected it to come first with Jared.
He was my cousin-twin. Born three weeks apart, to problem mothers. We were brothers; full of differences, but still the same.
When my mother first told me, I felt numb. Now, the chilled November air brings it back. The airport terminal is poorly insulated, and a draft of cold air steadily embraces me. I embrace it, too.
The Constitution Sate: dead, like the men who penned it. I send a message to Jared's sister, and tell her I can't wait to see her.
I steel myself for Black Thursday, and board the plane.
Don't be alarmed when a new window comes up when you submit a story. We're testing out a new feature to let you delete stories you have submitted. If you think this is a terrible idea, just shoot me an email at estenh AT storitell DOT com.
If you want to be able to delete your story after you've posted it, please type in two unique passphrases in the boxes below:
Deleting a story will remove it forever from StoriTell. To delete your story, enter in the two passcodes you typed in when you submitted it:
Please be considerate and constructive with your comments. Anonymity is not a blanket in which you can hide under to spook and scare other writers like a malicious five-year-old. It's more like a safety blanket, as far as ill-conceived metaphors go.