They say he’s dead. But he isn’t because if he were dead I would forget how he looks, sounds, and smiles. That’s what I fear, forgetting. It’s been exactly a day since my uncle died, but I don’t want to believe it. Maybe it’s the feeling of not wanting to let go? I don’t know. He wasn’t supposed to die, not like this. Not feet facing the bathroom, drunk. Not a few hours after he got into a fight with my grandfather, drunk. No, not like this. He had a whole life ahead of him. He needed to get over his addiction, which he had obtained twenty years ago. He needed to get married. He needed to have kids. He needed to get a job. He needed to live.

I wasn’t supposed to wake up on March tenth from my mother’s screams and cries of agony. I wasn’t supposed to see her face covered in newly developed wrinkles and trails of tears. I wasn’t supposed to go to school sobbing, wearing black. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Whenever someone asks how he died, I’m too ashamed to answer.

I feel numb. Something I’ve never felt before. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over his death. I’ve learned not to take my family for granted and that at any moment one of them could die. Poof. Just like that. But everyone dies eventually, it just wasn’t his time.