My older brother, my only brother, Luis went missing and was found dead in July of 2017. When I went to identify him, I was told I’d receive the results in three to eight weeks. The results. The cause of his death. I didn’t know what to expect. I never had someone so close to me die before. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t like he was ill. It wasn’t like he died at home in his bed, in his sleep, or got hit by a car. I think the worst part was knowing he was dead but not finding his body soon enough.

The day Dad and I went to pick up my brother’s ashes, the funeral coordinator handed me a manilla envelope. In it were three copies of his death certificate. The color was pale blue like his urn but with dark blue borders. Everything written, defined him. Name, Date of Birth, Age, Education, Race, Descendant of Hispanic Origin, Last Employer, Date of Death/ Date Found, Time of Death/ Time Found. The amount of information had smothered me but the words I searched for were CAUSE OF DEATH.

PENDING. That’s the answer.

I wanted to ask for all the videos in the area Luis was last seen, question all the people, demand answers. The police were involved but faded shortly after they found his body. He wasn’t far from where he was last seen. How he got there, no one knows. CASE CLOSED. DECEASED.

No evidence. No videos. No answers.

I imagined myself as him the night he died, walking through the dimly lit streets of Jersey City.

I imagined the smell of beer and other alcohol lingering on my lips.

I take my lip balm out of my pocket and rub it on my lips, aggressively.

I want this scent off. I put it back in my pocket.

The lip balm was still in his pocket when he was found in the puddle of water. He was found under Photograph courtesy of Len Spiro 15 the Bergen Arches, in a four-foot puddle of water.

I can picture Luis squinting to see signs and thinking, I left my glasses. I left my hat and glasses. Where is my phone? Who cares? I don’t feel well.

Something must have gone wrong. He must have felt something in his chest telling him, he wasn’t going to make it to the next day. Maybe, he didn’t feel anything at all.

I researched, I wrote, I had constant nightmares. Nightmares of myself as him, watching him, finding him floating in a puddle of water, as myself still searching for him.

I counted the days. I emailed the medical examiners and called, not often enough for them to say I was annoying and demanding. I was more concerned. I wanted answers. I feared the rain. I feared that my death would be like his, unexpected, traumatic, and tragic. I’d go missing and my body won’t be found for five days. When I am found, I won’t be identified and confirmed until another five days. My cause of death, drowning. I’ll be bloated, dirty, filled with maggots. Death is ugly. Yet, there is beauty in death. There is the memory, the rituals, the love. In the time I waited for the results, I learned of the beauty but didn’t accept it entirely. I didn’t wait for three to eight weeks. It was more. I waited for six months for the results.

Twenty-six weeks to be exact. On January 5, 2018, I got the results.

The results were in a manilla envelope.

Smaller than the ones that fit the 8 by 10 paper.

On it was the stamp of the medical examiner’s office. My name was handwritten. They forgot my middle name. On my brother’s death certificate, my full name showed up under “Name of Informant.” That’s what I am. My relation to him — Sibling.

I was receiving these results. They are mine. I shook as I held the folded papers. Mom asked me to wait, to not read, to just wait. Wait longer.

I waited for twenty-six weeks. I waited long enough.

When I emailed the medical examiners before the results, I received descriptions, enough to imagine Luis more vividly. My nightmares became more detailed. The torture wasn’t enough.

The first page was a letter to me, telling me that this belongs to me, that this is okay for me to have. It wasn’t attached to the rest of the papers.

I then opened his report, stapled, holding it together to flip over and over.

FINAL REPORT

THE AUTOPSY REPORT WAS AMENDED TO

READ AS FOLLOWS:

CAUSE OF DEATH: DROWNING

MANNER OF DEATH: ACCIDENT

I never considered the manner. Just the cause.

I read every page in full detail, making my skin drip from anxiety and depression.

The second page of the report was a description of his external examination. A list of what he was wearing and how they received the body. Luis wasn’t Luis. He was a body in a sealed bag, numbered. I knew the number.

They wrote that his clothes were heavily soaked. There was no damage to the garments. There was no sign of trauma anywhere on the body. No bruises. No dents.

The items in his pockets were a lip balm, money, keys, and a black lighter. No identification.

The descriptions of the face, the body, the organs. I knew all of it. The weight, the color, the maggots that were found with him. The inches of their length. I read these pages with no feeling. I read them as his informant, not as his sister. The details fascinated me, not because it was Luis but because it was death. Reading all of this was normal. Death is normal. I searched the words I didn’t understand and at times images would show up. I put those images in my head, replacing it with his body. Mom and Dad never read the results. I told them the cause, the manner, and that he was healthy. Luis’s death was natural yet unnatural in time and place.

Drowning is quick. The way he was found, I was told, means he didn’t know he was drowning. I continued to imagine myself as him. I felt the water, but I didn’t feel anxiety. Yet I, who am alive, feel so much anxiety.

ACCIDENT.

An accident is defined for medical examiner death certification purposes as an unnatural death resulting from an inadvertent chance happening.

Luis wasn’t supposed to die. That’s what I read when I researched why it says ACCIDENT.

At first, I was okay with the results and then I questioned. He was healthy. So unbelievably healthy that this makes no sense. His lungs failed him. The only organ that failed. The final page of the autopsy revealed the alcohol in his system. It wasn’t enough to kill him. It was dated and signed on September 14. My birthday. I felt my head fog up.

I had written months after he died, before I received the results, that he drowned.

I got it right, but it wasn’t alcohol that killed him, it was just his lungs.

DROWNING. ACCIDENT. That’s the answer. That’s how he died.

I still have questions.

I imagine myself as him wanting to find air, going to a dark place to catch my last breath, falling from my weakened lungs, my eyes closed, water filling me up and taking me away. I imagined myself having the last moments of my brain reminding me of the life I had. I researched what the brain does after death. The brain doesn’t die as quickly as the body does. The phrase, your life flashes before your eyes, wasn’t wrong. My thoughts, his thoughts, Luis, all there and then gone.

I looked at his death certificate after reading the results.

I read in a small box: Interval between onset and death:

The answer was UNKNOWN.

I want to keep searching. I want to know the answers.

But the answer is PENDING.

Luis often joked about dying before everyone, before me, before our parents, even before our cat. I never took him seriously. I don’t think anyone did. I always thought my brother would die last. I was wrong. He died before everyone. Now, I don’t think he was joking. After he died, I was guilty. For so long, I wanted my life to end instead of his. I realized how stupid it was for me to continue wanting to die. Now more than ever, I hate living. I’m not suicidal, no, I’m exhausted of living. It’s a hassle to wake day by day and function for others. It’s a hassle to be Rosa, the one everyone knows but doesn’t. People think of me as brave, funny, honest, kind, and blunt. After my days are over and I’m 16 alone in my bedroom, no our bedroom, I break. His things linger in the corners of my walls.

When I was just starting to go to college, I wrote how I wanted to die. I wrote how I expected to die. I imagine my death almost daily.

6:44 a.m. It’s Wednesday.

The alarm went off. I woke from a dream I didn’t remember. I got up, went straight to the bathroom and did the bathroom things. The sink was pearl white, never fully bleached to its potential. The blue tiles on the floor were a different shade from the ones that cover half of the wall. You could see the white in between the tiles, cement, glue… whatever it was, turning yellow.

I brushed my teeth. I had that teal modern toothbrush with two buttons. One to turn the vibration and the other to turn it off and make it normal again. I washed my hair with Tresemme, knowing it was bad for my curls. My hair was above my nipples but reaching the top of my slowly developing breasts. I probably had on a sweater, black leggings, and black sneakers with white laces. I walked to the silver car waiting in front of my house.

“Buenos Dias, Rosa.” My ex-boyfriend’s mom said with her heavy accent.

My ex was in the front smiling at me, making a funny face by scrunching his nose up and closing his eyes. This was routine for me. I wake up, get picked up, go to Jersey City.

But this day was different.

I sat in the back seat to the left. I stared into the sky and saw the hints of gray. Soft and pretty. The car was making a turn to the right, but it was a long turn, and next to us was a big white truck. There was no brand on the side of the truck. Perfect. I watched the truck.

“Hi, Luis. This is Blah Blah Hospital here in Jersey City, Rosa Garcia has been in a car accident on blah blah blah road.”

I can imagine it. I can imagine that white truck not being able to turn fully and smashing into my side, making me fly at full speed. And then that’s it.

I am dead.

I am gone.

And the first person to hear of my death is the one who fears it most, my brother, Luis.

That was what I wanted for that moment. I think about it now and wonder how long I have wanted to die.

I have tried so much in the past and then I gave up because I never succeeded. I could have always jumped off a bridge but that’s not the death I wanted. I wanted something I could control. Rosa. Isn’t that too much? To want a truck to hit you in 17 the middle of a ride with two other people. I guess I can’t understand my brain.

These thoughts were on my mind constantly. It was a never-ending desire of wanting to be gone. Months after my brother died, I ached for it again knowing I had no choice but to continue living. I have no choice now. I am expected to live as long as possible. I am expected to take care of my parents and to succeed. What they don’t know is this.

I walk through the sliding doors for the Light Rail.

Two stairs up.

Second row.

Window seat.

Staring into gray.

I want something tragic to happen.

A gunshot.

A car rushing and making me fly.

Fainting and not waking up.

Maybe death isn’t what I want but I want a neardeath experience.

Imagine.

A moment on the train I had imagined a man taking me and trying to rape me and I thought would I fight? Would I just let it happen because I would rather just not live anymore?

They have no problem ignoring. They as in everyone.

They have no problem leaving.

It is so easy to be alone.

To wait for a response.

To hope for someone to give a damn about me. I miss those times. The ones in the photographs and videos. The ones where smiling was natural.

I considered grabbing a box cutter and slicing my stomach open. That would guarantee the blood coming out.

I needed my brother.

No, I need my brother.

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