I Drive Your Truck

“Have you gone by his grave yet?” my mother asks.

Slowly, I lift my head up to meet her gaze. A gaze that once was comforting. A gaze that once showed me I could be anything. Her gaze once understood me; my pain, my longings, my wishes and dreams, but now she doesn’t understand- she can’t.

But now, her steady gaze just holds pity and grief. Grief that I can’t take away.

“No,” I reply.

It’s not like I can just walk on in and kneel by his grave. I can’t just sit there and think about him. I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I wouldn’t be able to do it.

“And why not?” her steely voice inquires. Her hands rest at her hips and her bushy hair falls in front of her eyes. I feel as If I were fifteen again after I had come back in after a night drinking. That same disappointment lingers in her eyes and around her down-turned mouth.

I sigh- something I have been doing a lot lately.

“I can’t, mom.”

“Why?”

Why can’t I? Is it every time I go near that cemetery, I feel like a fist is gripping my lungs? Is it that every time I walk along that path, I know I can’t go there? Is it that picturing him as a memory hurts too much to bear?

I sit in silence contemplating this for a while. Finally, I whisper, “Because I can’t do it, mom. I can’t walk to his grave and see that American flag waving in the breeze. I can’t stand that because he sacrificed his last breath, I’m still here. I can’t,” I have to swallow a lump in my throat, “stand the thought that he’s just a memory. And that with time, his memory may fade.”

A single tear trails down my chiseled cheek. I hastily wipe it away. Jake would have nailed me as a sissy if he had seen it.

“You fought too,” my mother reminds me.

The mention of my fighting causes a shiver to rake through my spinal column.

“It’s not the same for you, mom. You didn’t see him….” My whisper trails off as my throat closes up.

She sighs and nods. She slowly approaches to give me a hug, her arms spread wide. But I can’t do it. I can’t hug her back knowing that I had failed Jake, my identical twin brother.

My head drops back into my hands.

“You have to say goodbye,” she whispers as soft as a babbling river.

I shake my head against my hands. How can I let him go? My only brother. My best friend. The only man who has ever seen my tears. The only man who could sit through a golf game and not fall asleep. The only guy who could have told me to suck something up and not get punched in the face. The only one who was there for me. My comrade in arms.

I can’t. I won’t.

I scramble out of the wooden chair next to the table. The same table where Jake had shared his dream of being a soldier, and he had begged me to join him. The same table where we shared all of our birthday cakes with friends, and Jake and I would start a food fight.

I glance about the small room. Everything reminds me of him, of his sacrifice. Of how it should have been I lying on the cold hard ground with blood splattered across my chest.

“I have to go,” I choke out to my mother.

I grab the keys from my denim pants pocket. I rush through the living room, passing the hallway that leads to Jake and mine’s room. Memories of the late nights sharing secrets and telling each other how far we had gone with a girl swirls in my mind. More tears follow the first.