The Worst Pain of All

I can’t remember the last time I laughed. I can’t remember the last time I cried either. I’m just numb in those respects I guess. These days, I just kind of sit around thinking that everyone expects me to either be better by now or maybe just to break down and spill out all the tears held inside of me already. They’re wrong though. I won’t do either of those things. I can’t just forget something like this and I’ve never been one to show my feelings as easily as others anyways. I would if I could though, but I can’t find the tears to cry. I want to, I feel like I should, but I search deep inside and I don’t find any tears, only more pain.

A lot of people don’t really know what it’s like to lose someone you care about—like really lose, as in they’re never coming back, as in they’ve bit the bullet, gone to see the big man in the sky. I don’t know if there’s a Heaven, but if there is, Coop’s the one guy they ought to let in. He was the better one of the two of us. His middle name was Thomas but when everyone found out that his middle initial was T, some of the nurses at the hospital started calling him Cooper the Trooper because he was so tough. I didn’t have a cool nickname like that, I was just Max. Nothing rhymes with Max. They tried to call me Maximus thinking that was a pretty tough name, but I didn’t really like it and just told them to call me Max, it was short for Maxwell. It was okay though because I didn’t need a tough nickname anyways—I wasn’t the one who was dying.

We were both hurt pretty bad. If you ever have the choice to get in a car that’s going to end up in a tangled mess on the side of some train tracks, be sure not to get in the car. It wasn’t even our fault. I hate telling the story, but I guess you probably want to know what happened. Cooper and I were riding in a car one night with two friends, Audrey and Jake. Jake was driving, Coop was in the front seat, me behind him and Audrey next to me. Our town’s pretty small, you know? So when we saw the train coming we just stopped, we weren’t in any hurry. The bars came down and we just chilled, Jake put the car in neutral so he wouldn’t have to keep his foot on the clutch. But that’s when everything went wrong.

None of us saw it coming, though if we had, I’m not sure it would’ve helped much. This pick up truck came barreling into the back of us. They told me later the guy was completely wasted and that he’d be charged for Cooper’s death. It didn’t matter though, knowing that didn’t really help me feel any better. So now two lives were ruined, what difference did it make?

The truck hit us so hard that it pushed us onto the tracks, and Jake’s car stalled. It happened so fast after that. I saw a bright light and for a second thought that maybe Heaven did exist. I heard Cooper calling my name, but I couldn’t answer back. Then I woke up with a few broken ribs, a cast on my right foot, sling around my arm and a headache that pounded through my whole body. I was okay other than what they called a “pretty serious concussion we’re keeping an eye on,” but I was fine. I wanted to know where Cooper was. They wouldn’t tell me at first and I thought he was dead, but he wasn’t—at least not then.

Everything’s healed now. The only things that still remind me of the accident are the scar over my eye and the click in my elbow, but other than those I’m perfect other than the fact that I’m still empty inside. I still feel like something isn’t healed yet. Maybe when Cooper comes home from the hospital things will feel better. But he’s never coming home. I’ve told myself five hundred times, but I still don’t believe it. I try not to fool myself; I keep saying that the only things in my life that are real are the hurt I feel inside and the rain. Those are the only two things I have left.

My parents keep trying to tell me that my love for Cooper is real, too, and that as long as I have that he won’t really be gone. But they’re not the ones who have to be reminded of Cooper’s death everywhere they go. They don’t get the stares of everyone trying to remember which Hartley twin is dead so as not to say the wrong name and upset the other. Or even worse, they don’t have to deal with those who don’t even remember Coop’s dead and ask me which one I am, or maybe even just guess—wrong of course. Being asked or being mistaken was one thing when Cooper was alive, but now is another story…

All I have is that hurt inside, and the rain. It’s been raining a lot since Cooper’s been gone. Sometimes I just sit by the window and watch it fall—as if the sky is somehow crying for me because I can’t. And it never stops. I like to sit there on the bay window with it cracked open a little bit so I can smell the air and hear the rain hitting the house. I like to remember the fields when Cooper and I were little, and we’d run around, smiles spread across our faces. It seems so far away now, but these days, those memories are the only ones that make me think that maybe once upon a time, I was actually happy.