I saw the signs.

I went into denial.

No! my head screamed, no way! He'd been clean for eight years. He kicked his twenty year addictions. Heroin. Alcohol. Pills.

He was a fine, upstanding citizen. Turned his life around.

But I saw the signs.

I heard the clues.

My gut instinct roared the warning.

But denial is stronger than steel. Denial confirmed that there was no way he fell off the wagon. No way he was stealing. Not at thirty-eight. No way. Those days were long gone. History.

I was over-reacting. This was my "new" brother. The one who met me for coffee. Who came for dinner. Who was married with a three-year-old daughter and a three-month-old son.

He was not the brother in the gutter clasping a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag.

Not the brother I visited in jail.

Not the brother who's life I saved from overdosing.

And as the anniversary of his death draws near, I can't help but think back to that lazy August day when he told me that our favorite brother had tested positive for HIV.

He didn't bleach his needles. Didn't realize the "virus" had infiltrated the junkie circuit.

Didn't realize or didn't care? I would never know.

He was my favorite brother.

He was going to die.

I wanted to die.

But instead I got to work right away. Had to make room in the denial box where all painful things were stored.

My "new" brother assured me he'd be there to hold the family together. He owed us that for all he'd put us through. Don't you worry. I'll be right there with him till the end.

But he never could be trusted and true to his word, he checked out. Eight months later, he was dead. Choked on his vomit from an overdose of heroin. Fell hard from the top of the fictitious pedestal I put him on.

I sat next to my favorite brother in the front row of the church. We sat quietly in denial that our brother was dead. We sat quietly in denial that I would soon be back in this very same row. We sat quietly in denial that he would not.

And now as I reach an age he never saw, neither one of them saw, my emotions are raw. My nerves are shattered.

Guilt trumps denial.

Survivor's Guilt.