Monday, August 8, 2005

Nothing Gold Can Stay...


Chris Perkins 1974 - 2004

There are a lot of different kinds of moments to be found in 365 days. Today contains the moments known as the first anniversary of my brother’s death.

Now there are the times in life when I want to tell him something, but I can't; when I'd do anything to hear his voice, but nothing works; when I remember something funny he did, yet he's not here to tease about it... or there's the times I see someone who looks so much like him that my heart stops and I can’t breathe. I can’t help myself, but I still entertain the childish hope that it was all some crazy mistake, a case of mistaken identity, and that one day I am going to get a phone call, or an email, or I really am going to see him on the street with that "Surprise I’m here" smile of his (my brother would often drop out of life only to reappear when you least expected him to).

Actually, there hasn't been a day since Chris died that I haven’t thought about him in some way. His death, like non other I’ve experienced, has affected me in profoundly deep ways: it was so unfair; he was too young: he deserved more than to die in such a senseless manner and place; I couldn’t protect him. I feel as if he was stolen from me and I can’t describe the anger and the pain that accompanies something like that.

He adored me; he was my first love, my first friend, my first enemy, my first charge. My little, baby brother that was born, I was sure, just as a gift for me. The relationship between siblings is a unique one and we were supposed to have our whole lives to explore it.

But never less, one year ago today, someone named Christopher Braden Robinson from Edson Alberta killed my brother.

And he has never even said he was sorry.