A Eugoogoolizer...One Who Speaks at Funerals

I do not know how to grieve my brother because I have never lost someone like this before. I still feel like I can text him or call him, and he'll just answer the phone. I wish I didn't always forget that he's gone. Remembering suddenly makes the wounds all fresh again.

I wish I could record all the jokes and conversations and memories we shared over the last 21 years. I have found that writing them just makes them wooden. The memories are alive and brilliant in my mind, but I can't express them without turning them hollow. I looked up the word "bereft" because the word seemed to have all the texture of what I'm feeling. The definition was "Suffering the death of a loved one," but I found the second definition to be more poignant. It also means "Deprived of, lacking, stripped of, robbed of." That one hit the nail on the head. When I remember that I've lost him, I feel like my waist and ribs are eaten away, like part of me has melted off and it will never come back. He was the only one to share those memories with me. He was the only one who understood. I have lost the only person who grew up with me.

If I could see Phil again, I would hold him and tell him how hurt I am that he left me behind. He and I always did everything together; we shared so many of the same experiences. Now, he's gone where I cannot go, beyond my reach. He was supposed to stay here with me; he was supposed to meet my baby and become famous and have many decades-worth of memories with me. We were supposed to complain about our parents and plan holidays and remember our childhood together. He was supposed to taste splendid success. I wonder sometimes which is worse: the pain remembering the things we did, or the pain mourning the things we didn't.

I wish our relationship had not been so complicated in the most recent years. However, we were getting better, so I can only dream that, had he lived, we were on track to repairing some of those cracks.

I'm going to set aside the maudlin for a moment and give you a eulogy in pictures. Enjoy.

We didn't want to leave Mimi's house, so we clung to her and cried.

We still had to leave. Reynolds, GA 1993

Phil was too little to go down the big slide by himself. New Jersey, 1992

Top: Us at the lookout at Raven Rock, NC in 1997

Bottom: Us at the same lookout in 2006

He loved to garden with our Grandbubber (RIP) - Reynolds, GA

Phil and Dad made a REALLY heavy box-car when we lived in NC. 

If we ever started a family band, this would have been the album cover. 1998

Phil liked to catch bugs, lizards, and, in this case, crayfish. Helen, GA 1998

Phil's make-up artist class - I was his guinea pig - Florida, 2007

An example of the many, many hours we spent on the back deck in Tallahassee, 2008

This is exactly what it looks like. Tallahassee, 2008

Christmas Eve, 2007. We spent Christmas Eve on the beach in Sarasota,

and we made sand-people instead of snow-people.

This is one of my favorite memories with Phil. 

Yes, the sand-man is smoking a cigarette.

St. Pete with our friends

PHILIP SCHWALM 1990-2012