It was two years ago we were all there together for what we didn't know then would be the last time. I have a bunch of great photos from that visit; I especially love the one of you with your sibs flipping me off as I take the picture.
It's weird how much I miss you, how much your non-presence in these current photos feels so just plain wrong, like in that Back to the Future episode where the brother fades out of the photo because the past was altered. Where are you, Sky? I want you in these pictures, damn it. You're over four months gone now but if anything the ache of your absence grows more acute with every photo I offload that you're not in. I guess it's good in a way (I am desperately hoping) -- maybe this is the way that for me the reality of your forever goneness will finally sink in and I can stop wishing for what can't be undone, stop wanting what I can never have, stop imagining that instead of a gun you picked up a phone that night and called your brother, called your sisters, called your lover, called someone, called anyone....
I am so, so tired of thinking about what should have been, what should be -- how, for example, you and D (who you would have gone nuts over) will never know each other; how all the ways you would have been such an amazing influence on your niece and nephews as they grew up will never happen now; how all their memories of you will swirl away in the vale of time and "Uncle Sky" will be known by name only. And I am so mad that I have to accept the unacceptable, that I can't change the past, that what's done is done. Damn it. Damn it, Sky.
