I sit alone on the living room couch. Outside a full moon stands among the stars but inside the dark sustains itself. I was restless. I lack the desire to sleep. My family members are all confined in a deep slumber. The only means of light comes from the screen that settles on the image of my mother. For the first time I truly see from the eyes of a loved one. I feel what he feels. As i rewind the cassette I consider the odds of the video remaining so long on my mother with out words. She’s simply cooking but the way the camera angles i see dedication but i sense sorrow. Not with in my mother but with in the man that holds the camera. The man my mother refers to as Paco. My Uncle.
In a subliminal way do we tend to say goodbye. Do we tend to give signs that perhaps life has taken its toll. Does the concrete frame crumble in time. Or do we all just give way to the idea that time is not the only savior nor escape. Perhaps death can do what mountains of love could never accomplish.
“Thats how your uncle Paco looked like”,my mother says as a young man passes with a frame more etched and inked than the skin he bears. His pants sag below his waist. And he wears a shirt a size bigger than should be.
My mother always says comments like these. My mother always holds the moment in her steps. She seems to walk slower. As if she hopes the young man suddenly became the brother she loved and lost. She does all this unconsciously. It’s routine. Out of the hundreds of young men we have seen with the same description. With the same aspects, the same laugh, the same charisma. None are him. None will ever be him.
Mothers day came in a dark haze. I recall not the memory but the pain. I was 5 or 6 years old. The age happens to slip out of my mind. Because years feel more like nights. Time has no interval between then and now. And memories  grasp to the present. 
“He had a car accident, they told me, He’s dead” My mother recalls the story to pinpoint the flaws with love.
There was no car.
There was no accident.
There was no crumbled metal fit for evidence of a life taken away by unexpected events. No tire marks on payment with the reminisce of desire to latch on to life a little longer. And no one dead in a driver seat with a heart yearning to live but a body that gave in.
“They didn't want me to know. They knew this would hurt more”. My mother recalls with glassy eyes.
They found him.
No pulse.
Not him. Just the frame of what he was.
If light travels faster than sound, why did no one see the signs before they believed the lies?
  The rope held him in place.
It was days before they told my mother the truth. Mothers day had gone and passed. His rope had been cut and his body masked with makeup to make believe life was still in him.
“He killed himself” My mother always hurries the words.
My Grandmother cried for days. My mother still cannot forget. And his daughters do not have a father today.
My mother always tells me. “He loved you so much. He cut your hair the way he liked it. He bought you whatever you desired. He always wanted you to be with him. He really loved you.” The words engraved in my heart. Over and over.
“He had a heart full of joy and jokes.” I always hear that phrase when i ask my family members about him. I like to think perhaps God needed someone to help him laugh more and my uncle knew it. But I will never get used to the idea of death. I will never understand why love cannot make someone stay. I will always hold my mother a little longer because she alike i know nothing is promised. He etched our hearts and made a chamber of his life in our own. Nights will forever remain with memories and the sky will always seem to grasp a star that once was ours.
I turn off the screen and walk into the garage and take the trench coat he left my mother. And i step in front of a mirror. Wearing each grain of the coat entitled to him.  And wonder,simply wonder, how would it feel like to die young and have everyone miss me.