Today...

Today marks another year...another year without hearing the piano playing, another year without someone pulling my hair and running, another year without his practical jokes, another year without...without Mark. I can remember that day like it was yesterday. I learned some things I didn't know today...Lisa told me that she was the one that called 911. The 911 operator made Lisa go up to where Mark laid and check for pulses. Lisa had to walk past the bay window and look out and see my daddy clinging to a pole outside, crying out...then walk up those stairs just getting to the door to the back porch and see my mother crying...vomiting from the grief. She then had to walk through the den, into my old bedroom and look at my brothers body laying there to check to see if he was alive. He wasn't, he was already cold. Then Lisa had to make that same walk in reverse back to the phone to tell the operator that he was not breathing, had no pulse and was cold. The operator said...we will send someone out but it will be a while since he is dead already. Lisa lost it, she yelled at the operator that Mark may be gone, but his parents are not doing well and if they didn't want to deal with a heart attack or one of them getting really sick they better send someone now. I don't know how long it took the EMS to get there, but they did. I never knew any of that, I can't bring myself to talk to my mom and dad about it. My mom prayed last night that God would let her dream about her baby boy during the still of the night. I don't know if she did. But, I can't imagine clinging to dreams to hold onto your youngest son. When I walked into Mom and Dads house today to get ready for the showers...I heard walking upstairs and assumed it was daddy. I yelled.."DADDYYYYY...I am here..." Then bout yelped when he said I am in here and walked out of the kitchen. I said I heard something upstairs just assumed it was you. He said no, it is the ghost...said it so matter of factly. I got a chill and just let it go.

I went by his grave today, I was so tired...had just left the hospital. But I sat there beside his grave and though I knew he knows about mom being sick...I just talked to him...closed my eyes and it took me a moment to get his face in my vision...but when I did, I just couldn't help but smile. He was so funny, he would probably cry though..he loved his mom - and Dad too. But he was a mommas boy. He would probably say that mom is too tough to let this get her down long and would be sitting in her hospital room flirting and joking with the nurses. People would remember and know him before they would mom...he just had that kind of personality.

Mark I love you, I hope you visited our mother last night in her dreams. I hope you gave her a hug and she felt it with every fiber in her body. I hope she could smell your hair and feel the softness of your skin under her lips...if only in a dream - it would bring her such joy.