Happiness and Joy? Will it ever be again?

  Happiness and Joy have always filled our house.  I love the sounds of teens laughter and music filling our house throughout the day and late into the night.  We always wanted our house to be the go to house so we opened it completely.  We built a swimming pool, hot tub, game room, music building just so they would feel at home.  This meant we spent a lot of nights, Bart and I, in our bedroom with the tv turned up loud so we could hear. But that was wonderful to fall asleep in the room next to a living room full of people laughter and life.
  Once again our living room was full of people but they weren't laughing and the life seemed drained from them.  Everywhere I looked, every inch of space was covered with people but sorrow filled their eyes and they spoke in hushed whispers.  A new person would enter the house and the tears and hugs would follow but soon they too would take a post and not know what to say.  We were all at a loss for words.  How do you put into words the depth of the sorrow felt that first night.  That waiting for what to do next.  We all sat and waited.  Waited for what?  For someone to say it wasn't true, to say why?  Why did this happen?  How did it happen?  Who was to blame?  Those answers would come much later.  Right now we did not even have the ability to form those questions out loud.
  Food was brought in.  The first thing we do when we hear of someone dying is bring food.  It is a wonderful tradition to keep the people who are grieving from having to cook but food is so hard to consume.  I sat on that couch and watched the people come and go, hug and cry, comfort and pray but all I wanted to do was die. I wanted to sit on the couch and no longer exist.  How would I ever be able to get up the next morning knowing I would never be able to hug my precious son again?  How would I ever be able to breathe again knowing he no longer existed.  How does one who is so filled with life quit  living?  How does the heart just stop?  I wanted my heart to stop.  I wanted to lay down and die so the pain would quit.  Every nerve in my body screamed out to put an end to this pain.  But instead I sat on the couch and watched the room.   I hugged when I needed to.  I spoke when spoken to.  I ate when I was told to.  But I wouldn't leave my couch.
  Friends tried to get me to lie down in the bedroom for a bit.  Rest.  Every time I would close my eyes U would see his face in the ER.  Still today I don't do well closing my eyes in silence.  The pain was and is so great that at times my skin even hurts.  It is so all consuming.
  So back to the couch to wait. Wait.  Wait for the last hurdle.  Zachary coming home.  Friends were able to get him plane immediately home.  I needed all of my family under this roof before I could lay my head down.  But that wouldn't happen because one of my family was at the medical examiner's office.  Alone. Alone all alone and I could not bare to even begin to think of that picture.  Again your mind shuts down.  We wait.  I begin to think of  Zachary packing to come home.  Come home to a life that will never be the same.  Come home to big brother who has looked up to, his best friend, dead.  How is he wrapping his mind around this?  How does he get on that plane and make his way home to be greeted by all of this?
Someone leaves.  They are going to pick him up.  I can't leave the couch.  My safe place.  The place I must sit to keep from running.  Soon I hear the car doors and I know he is walking up the drive. He is reaching the porch where so many times before he has come home to find his brother sitting there reading a book and smoking a cigarette.  How can I face him?  I have failed him.  I have failed to keep his brother safe.  I have failed to keep his life in balance.  I have failed.  I hear the door opening and I turn my head to see his broken body enter.  Our eyes meet and the sadness in them is unbearable.  We run to each other and hang on.  Hang on to the hope that some how our lives will survive.   He crumbles and I crumble into him.  Bart and Kyler are there to hold us up.  The eyes in the room are turned down.  This moment is so private.  A family broken but forever held tight by the love in the room and the love of God.  God's presence is felt.  His heart is broken for us.  The depth of sorrow in this room surpasses any I have ever felt.  To put one foot in front of the other is too hard.  We move back to the couch.  The island of safety.  The questions come that I can't answer.  My heart breaks all over as I watch my two boys hold each other and grieve for what they have lost.  I have lost a child but they have lost their hero, their best friend, their brother. a part of them is gone forever.