Natural Life

I spent the majority of this weekend fixated on the term “natural life.” It sounds so gentle, like you could place it on a pile of autumn leaves and it wouldn’t make a sound. But when it comes to you, the term plunges through me like an anchor through the ocean; heavy, crushing, direct. Should your sentence stand, you will be in prison for the remainder of your natural life. 

Daddy says you never know. You could appeal, get a lesser sentence, and then maybe get parole. 

“I never thought I’d see Jamaine again.” he says. “He got 75 years. And he lives and breathes.” Daddy tilts his head toward the floor. Jamaine, who served 24 of those 75 years, lives and breathes in the basement. As we speak of his triumph on a quiet Saturday evening, Jamaine is likely smoking a cigarette, playing his Xbox, talking on the phone, or performing a combination of the three. Daddy shrugs, silently punctuating his point. In his eyes I see not the pitiful hope of a wishful man, but the sincerity of someone who knows from experience that miracles absolutely happen. I think you and I can  both agree that life is chock full of little surprises. 

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A part of me has spent the past three years wondering if I had loved you more tangibly, would you still have gone searching for love in desolate places. I know that this notion is both nonsense and irrelevant. But I have to be honest. I often wonder. I wonder which version is true. I wonder if you are still scared, and if you have enough blankets at night. I wonder if it is audacious of meto publicly miss and love you, when another family will miss their brother for the rest of their lives, presumably at your hands. 

This is how I cope. Whatever comes my way is tossed back and forth like the tide in my mind until it is finally written. You know it’s hard for me to speak sometimes if it’s not on paper. At least with written words I can lay out the pain and arrange it so that it is just as beautiful as it is biting. With written words I can address the worst first and guide myself  back to the conclusion that you are more than what you have been convicted of doing. You are my brother, who prepped me for prom, who reluctantly killed spiders for me, who splashed by my side through the summer rain. You are the boy who burst into my room at midnight, every single birthday you could. You are boy who bent over backwards to get the angle, who rode out when we rode out, no questions asked. And though I hate what you are accused of doing, I love you no less in this moment than I did when you were the big-eyed, hook-headed, knobby-kneed boy who offered me his shoulder as I sobbed at Grandma’s casket. My brother, that’s who you’ll always be to me. For the rest of your natural life.