People say I am an overly-emotional being. I either show no emotions or an abundance of the. My brother has been gone for some time now. Today marks 3 year and each year only gets harder to come to terms with. Let’s go back to the beginning, Sean was an adorable blonde haired blue-eyed baby born to my parents who both had brown hair and hazel eyes. My dad was an adopted German though, so we always assumed Sean’s looks came from that side of the family. He really was an adorable baby. He just made me jealous like crazy. It seemed that once he came,  he was the focus of all of my parents attention. I used to steal his binky just to make him cry. But that only made my parents come running to fix the problem. As he got a little older, he got more fun to play with. Around age 5 he started watching movies like The Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka and the Cholate Factory with me. He liked when I sang the songs to him. He really was sweet like that. We shared a room in the apartment we lived in at the time and he liked to snuggle after our parents went to bed and watch old movies. That’s when I swore I would protect him, being the older sister.
Fast forward a few years and I am now 12 and Sean is now 5. I walk from my school daily to pick him up from his school. Then we walk home together. We lived in an apartment building where lots of kids lived. There was always someone to play with. Plus, we had our Nana living right behind our building in her old age housing. We would go visit her every day to say hi and she would try to feed us. We played with all of the neighborhood kids. We would take several items outside at once to play with so we wouldn’t have to to up the 7 flights of stairs to our apartment to swap out for something else to play with. We would have our bikes, our skateboards, our roller skates, and more out on the back lawn for easy access. It was always fun skateboarding down the big hill that headed toward our Nana’s building.
Kids used to also play games like kickball, Red Rover, and Ollie Ollie Oxen free in the parking lot that was surrounded by housing buildings and a park. That was fun until one day a larger bully kid came around to bully the little ones. My brother was a little one, as was his friend Calvin. Luckily I had befriended an 18 year old Kevin, that everyone called Fats. Everyone knew that he didn’t like bullies. He took it upon himself to protect all of the kids in the neighborhood. He was amazing, sweet, strong, and took no bull from anyone. He died in a work accident in 1989 that completely devastated me and his niece. I really cared about Kevin like he were a very close friend. I think a part of me died with Kevin that day. My family moved from Brookline to Brockton that very week. My parents finally bought a house. I would have my own room!!!!
The house was……cute. I  now know it is a front to back split. It had a fully finished basement where we had a pool table for a while. After moving in, I noticed  my bedroom door had a lot of phone numbers written in the doorjam. I knew the family we bought the house from and was pretty sure the kid that lived in what was now my room had lots of girls numbers. I remember the first week of living there, Sean did not want to sleep in his room alone. We used to pop up my trundle bed so he could still sleep in my room with me. He was a scared little kid.
As school started back up in September, I had already made friends by walking around our neighborhood all summer. I had a group of friends, mostly older than me, to hang out with. I was only allowed to go out once my parents were home from work and there to watch my brother. As many people know, I helped raise him. I made sure he was fed, showered, homework done, and in bed at least relaxing when parents came home from work. At this point he is almost 8 years old and starting to get on my nerves. He wants to be wherever my friends and I are. He always wants to tag along. The only friend of mine that I let him do that is Todd. He is from Brookline, where we moved from, and one of my best friends at the time. He and I take my brother to Nantasket Beach to play the video games. WE have a ton of fun. Todd is really the only friend of mine that knows how to put up with Sean and his crazy behavior. He lets Sean win against him in Skee Ball and the basketball game. After hours of playing, we all ride the carousel. After, we buy Sean an Ice Cream for the ride home.
 
Whenever I have girl friends over, he tries to chase them out of our house with his bow and arrow set. The one girl he never chased away was Jeanne. She was one of my best friends in high school. AS a kid, my best friend was Maria. She was hit by a car on Halloween one year and was in a coma for months. When she came to, her family moves her off to a mansion in Westwood. I didn’t get to see here again until we were sophomore’s in high school. That summer between freshman and sophomore year I spent a lot of time with her. We hung out with her boyfriend and his friends most of the time. There were times she came and hung out at my house with my friends too. My parents didn’t like my hanging out with her due to the sneaking out of her house and being exposed to alcohol. I was quickly banned from going there.
 
When I started dating, Sean felt like he had to be my protector. He wanted to make sure his big sister didn’t get hurt. Of course, the one time I did get hurt as a dating teenager, he had befriended the guys next door neighbor and wasn’t watching for red flags. What was harder about this breakup was that this guy would often stop by my parents’ house asking about my situation. He wouldn’t leave me alone for the rest of my high school career. In fact, the day I got married he was parked in his car across the street the whole time. Sean went to go talk to him and he took off.
 
When Sean started dating I begged him to be careful and use protection. I even bought him condoms. He refused to use them and would up getting a girl pregnant while in high school. She took off to West Virginia with the baby. Sean and I drove down there one weekend to see his daughter. We only got to spend a few hours with her, bur she didn’t want us to leave. Then we  would see her from time-to-time during holidays where the family came back up to MA.
 
After that, Sean was with a girl I really liked at the time. I thought her no bull attitude could help straighten him out and keep him in line. Pretty soon they found out they were pregnant with my nephew Bryan. When they found out, they had been broken up and Sean was with another woman. She too was pregnant with my nephew Dylan. Sean stayed with the girlfriend and had another boy, Gage with her. These two were very toxic. They fought a lot, were jealous a lot, and didn’t trust the other to breathe without the other being right there to witness it. This made for a difficult case with Meghan for Sean to be able to be around Bryan.
New girlfriend Kendra took him down a dark path with using drugs. I can’t think of a time while with her where he was clean. This was the reason I did not want him at my house around my kids. My husband and I don’t even drink, so our kids aren’t used to seeing that kind of behavior or language. He did come around a few times when he seemed to be on track to getting clean and my kids loved him.
 
The next time we were able to spend time with him was at my parents house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then their relationship started to crumble. Sean ended up getting custody of the boys and moving in with my parents. That is where they’ve been for the last 6 years. Sean got to keep them because the courts tested both parents and he was clean and she was not. It has been viewed that she has taken so long to get herself together so she must not really want her kids back.
 
The night I was told my brother dies is forever in my brain. My teenage daughter and I were out doing food deliveries for UberEATS and DoorDash. It was late and we were on our way home. When we hit our property, my phone rang. It was my dad. What’s wrong? Dad never calls so something had to be wrong. His voice sounded shaky. He said something about losing someone tonight but my phone cut out on him. So I said “Who did you say?” He slowly repeated “your brother”. I dropped my phone and nearly hit the garage. I quickly pulled into a parking spot and got out of the car, still talking to my dad about what happened. I was talking loudly, I know, because when we got up to our apartment my husband opened the door and told me I was talking too loud.  I said bye to my dad and proceeded to tell my husband “I don’t care how f***ing loud I am talking I just became an only child”. Then I burst into tears, felt sick immediately like someone punched me in the stomach, and had to run to the bathroom. I knew I had to be on a plane like tomorrow back to MA but we also had 2 kids. One was a teenager that could behave while one was 6, has ADHd, and can be totally out of control. Plus I knew I didn’t want to stay in a hotel. I wanted to be right there for my parents and help them with everything.
Needless to say I did not sleep a wink that night, nor have I slept much since. I used to fall asleep so easily, pretty much once my head hit the pillow, but now I need help from Ambien to fall asleep. I was sleeping in Sean’s room with the boys and my daughter. I wrote his eulogy in that room. I cried a LOT in that room. I could smell him in that room. I can’t smell him anymore. I can’t hug him anymore. I can’t tell him I love him anymore.
The girl who is mom of Bryan and caused several problems and wouldn’t let Sean see his son for over a year was now his girlfriend again. She came to my mom’s house to talk things out. Sean died at her house and she found him. Here’s the thing. Her story doesn’t add up, never has to anyone. Sean was over 6 feet tall and not a skinny dude. Meghan is a smaller woman. She insists she was gone for 20 minutes to the corner store to pick up a few things. She said when she got home she started dinner and went to check on Sean. She said there was vomit all over the bed so she rolled him over and saw he wasn’t breathing. Here is where her story makes you go “huh?”. She says she picked him up off of the floor and dropped him on the floor. She said she started giving him CPR. But she told the police she thinks he had Fentanly in his system and that she didn’t want to get to close to it on his face. So, how are you giving him proper CPR? I got to listen to her 911 tape from that night and she WAY too calm on that tape.
In the days that followed, she did some shady things. The police wanted his phone, as is. She didn’t get it to them for days. Long enough to go in and delete the text string between the 2 of  them leading up to his death where she was yelling at my brother
Each year is more difficult to get through. Here I sit on year 3 writing this out, hoping it gets some of the rage and sadness out for me. Meghan actually had the nerve to try to light a candle on his memorial page  this year talking about how much she and Bryan miss and love him so so so much. But she has a new boyfriend and doesn’t look upset or sad. She certainly looks to be moved on. This is a girl that used to claim they were high school sweethearts and it was fate for them to be together. If you feel like that, moving on after only a year is ok? You know they say Kharma is a bitch, well her house burning down seems to be Kharma to me.
 
My brother WILL be truly loved and missed by those that knew and loved him best, his family. I wear a ring with his ashes in it every day. I lost my amazing Nana while I was pregnant with my first daughter, I lost a baby via miscarriage  and I can tell you this was THE WORST TIME OF MY LIFE. I still don’t understand how this is my new reality. Sean is extremely missed and the world will never be the same.
 
Seanly, I miss you more and more every day. I try to keep you alive with stories to Cody so he remembers you for the rest of his life. You really held a special place in my heart. I helped take care of you while mom and dad worked and looked at you like you were MY son. My heart was shattered 3 years ago and I’m not sure it can ever be put back together. I love you and miss you more than you will ever know. You were my best bud growing up and I miss you!!!