The First Funeral I Ever Attended Was My Brother’s

Correction: it wasn’t the first funeral I went to. But it was the first one I was in. The first one where the loss had a name and that name was carved into the inside of my goddamn ribs.

Before that, death was just something that happened to old people in Lifetime movies. Something you dressed nice for and sat through while watching the grown-ups cry. You'd think about snacks afterward, or how cold the church was. You might catch a whiff of grief in the air, but it wasn't yours. Not really.

But when it’s your brother? When it's your person? The one who shared the shitty jokes and late-night cereal and family secrets nobody else even knew existed?

That funeral doesn’t end.

You wear a suit but you feel naked. You try to write something worth reading aloud but every word feels like a betrayal. You speak anyway. Because you have to. Because if you don’t say it, who the hell will?

And while everyone’s whispering about how strong you are, how composed, how mature, you’re watching the dirt get shoveled onto the box and realizing that the part of you that used to believe in safe endings just got buried, too.

You don’t get a handbook for that. No YouTube tutorial. No priest or therapist or grief counselor tells you how to navigate a world where your brother stops breathing and you don’t.

You just sit with it. And sometimes you scream into your pillow until the seams break. Sometimes you look at your own face in the mirror and think, Why not me? And sometimes—on the worst nights and the better ones—you dream about a conversation that never happened and wake up clinging to the echo of a voice that isn’t there anymore.

People talk about their first love. Their first kiss. First job. First car.

But your first funeral—the first time death makes a home in your chest—that’s the day you stop being a kid. That’s the day you learn there’s no off switch for loss. Just volume control.

And mine?

Was for my brother.