'Grief; the intense sorrow one feels over a death.'
Declan gently cleaned the gravestone – he doesn't think he's ever felt so alone. It's been so many years too. He was young when his mother died, and he remembered being excited to get a new baby brother, that he'd do his best to be a good older brother to Leo. But, he didn't know how things quickly changed and before long the constant movement and bright lights of the hospital seemed to have burnt itself into the back of his eyelids.
Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the panic in his dad's eyes, and the terrified gasps of a nurse as they rushed to save his mum. Declan knew he was too young at the time to properly comprehend it, but nonetheless, he knew something was wrong. The rest of that day was a blur, and he remembered going home that day too.
The drive was silent, one less person in the car, and the rain was heavy, the radio playing softly in the background, words and everything seemed almost muffled. The house was quiet too, and distinctly, he remembered asking his dad, why mum wasn't coming home with them. His dad replied, or maybe he didn't, Declan couldn't remember properly, instead focusing on the soft breaths of his new baby brother, who laid there in the car seat, sleeping gently, and quiet.
Time passed in a blur after that, there were a bunch of things his dad seemed to be handling, but all Declan knew was that mum never came home. It wasn't until two weeks later when Declan finally met his mum again; not in the way he was expecting. Definitely not, but he did remember thinking his mum was just sleeping – yet, he wondered why the other adults looked so sombre, and how when he tried to play with some of the other relatives, like Aunt Cassy and Uncle Adam, there was something different in the way they regarded him.
He knew now that it was pity.
Then over the years, he saw his Aunt Cassy and Uncle Adam more, they let him sleep over more, looked after him more and had practically become his second parents, and their place, a second home for him. The distance between him and his father grew, although it wasn't that his father didn't try, he was more often than not, tending to Leo. Trying to raise a young baby, yet Declan hadn't felt more sidelined. More often than not, he asked Uncle Adam, about his dad, and his uncle told him their stories about what they got up to in their childhood, and the trouble they often got up to or caused. Declan remembered thinking that he couldn't wait for his Leo to be old enough to also cause trouble with him.
For a period of time, he was happy, and when his father was less grief-stricken, they seemed to almost go back to a functioning family. Leo was growing up too, and Declan was more than happy to hang around and play with Leo – Leo was a good kid, he remembered, he was happy and always clung to him, came running to him when he was scared of things in the dark, or just burst into his room to wrestle with him.
Declan blinked slightly, focusing on the headstone again, and gingerly started to clean it as he continued reminiscing.
Then another incident changed their family again. They were at a park, playing – it was another day, and their father was sitting away from them, on a bench. Talking to another parent, Declan watched over Leo, playing on the swings, laughing and giggling as Declan watched from the side, and periodically giving Leo a push when he asked, so he could go a little higher than he would have otherwise been able to manage himself.
He remembered turning away for a brief moment as a football rolled over to his foot, he glanced up and turned, nodding at the kids and kicking it back to them before turning back in time to Leo fall out of the swing as another young toddler ran up behind in the swing, causing the toddler to be knocked back – he remembered the shrill scream of pain from the young child, but what he remembered with greater clarity was the sound of Leo's head colliding with the concrete.
Declan blinked again, before wringing the sponge and scrubbed a little harder, ignoring the way the stone dug into his skin, turning it red. He sighed as he wrung the sponge again and focused on washing the headstone, before kneeling there for a moment, looking at the headstone, before looking over the details engraved onto the stone.
"I miss you, mum," Declan whispered softly, as he gently rested his head against the stone.
His figure shrouded in a cloud of grief, it seemed to cling to him like a second skin, almost a fog, and if you could feel it you could almost see it. You can see it in the way he holds himself, like too much guilt in one place, too much pain, and unshared suffering – almost taste the suffocation, one can see it in his brown eyes, almost dull, yet sometimes on a random day, you can see the slight spark, and a gentle quality to his demeanour. Rare and almost jarring from his usual sternness. Yet, where he was stern, he made up for it in his actions, maybe his words were biting at points, but the undercurrent of consideration was what drove his actions. Even when it came to looking over Leo, he tried to keep his distance, and that accident had changed Declan as much as it had changed Leo; the other former lost his sense of innocence, replaced with the heavy burden of responsibility and infallibility, the latter had become a stranger in Declan's eyes, none of the old familiarity and tenderness was there anymore. Their closeness as brothers seemed to have been stripped away, and Leo hadn't seeked him out the same.
He looked to the clear blue sky, something that seemed to have made the grief all the more potent, and couldn't explain the inexplicable sense that something else was ready to go terribly wrong again.
Declan looked at the headstone once more, setting a bouquet down, speaking tenderly, "I'll visit again soon, mum. Wait for me."