how do i cry?
The story
My older brother died three weeks ago, and I have not cried since the call that told us he was gone. At the funeral, I stood beside his dark blue casket with my jaw aching and my eyes completely dry, even while my mother soaked the shoulder of my jacket. Now the pressure shows up whenever I am alone in my apartment, sitting behind my ribs like a held breath that refuses to move. I keep typing the same embarrassing question into a blank note: how do i cry? I feel ridiculous asking, but I am tired of carrying grief that will not come out in the way everyone expects.
My phone still holds his last voicemail, left at 2:13 a.m., and it is eleven seconds of him saying, "Hey, nerd, call me when you wake up. I found that hot sauce you like." I replay it secretly with my earbuds under the blanket, because hearing the little throat clear before he says my name makes him feel close enough to touch. Every time, I expect his voice to hit some hidden switch and finally wreck me. Instead, my chest tightens, my face gets hot, and the message ends with the soft tap of him hanging up. Then I stare at the replay button, pissed off at myself, and start it again.
The dry eyes have become evidence in my relatives' minds. My aunt cornered me near the church coffee urn and said, "You were always so detached from him," as if tears were receipts I had failed to produce. A cousin kept looking at me during the burial, not at the grave, and later asked whether my brother and I had been fighting. My brother and I were not fighting. He sent me dumb pictures from the hardware store, stole fries from my plate, and called whenever our mother got worried about a storm. I wanted to tell them all of that, but defending our relationship in a church hallway felt gross, so I said, "Please do not make this harder," and walked outside.
At home, I have tried sitting in the dark with his voicemail playing, taking a shower so nobody could hear me, and holding the gray hoodie he left over my kitchen chair. The shower and hoodie do nothing. I even folded a towel on the bathroom floor because I thought the sight of being prepared might give my body permission, which sounds pretty stupid when I write it down. The pressure still builds until my hands shake, then fades into a dull headache. I am not numb about him. I miss the way he said my full name when I was being a pain, and I hate that his hot sauce is still unopened in my cabinet.
Yesterday, my mother came over and saw his hoodie on the chair. She did not ask why I was not crying. She touched the sleeve, told me he used to complain that my apartment was always freezing, and then laughed in that tired, broken way people laugh when the memory hurts and helps at the same time. I laughed too, and for a moment my eyes stung. Nothing fell, but it felt like a small crack, so I am trying to believe my body is not betraying him or me. I would be grateful for a plain answer from anyone who has had grief get stuck like this: how do i cry?
