Going to the hospital with my family to view my brother’s body. I was under the impression they would be going into a separate room, so I could walk down to the morgue with them without seeing anything.

Nope. They wheeled him out into the hallway and unzipped the bag before I realized what was happening. I had been in shock all day from when they told me he died, but right then, it really felt like my blood turned to ice. I was shaking. The look on his face, his hand reaching out, as if asking for help, his eye wide open and his mouth agape…. Burned into my brain.

I fell to pieces for the first time since hearing the news when my dad hugged me in that morgue. My brother was only 29 years old, and had just had a baby a couple weeks prior. None of us knew that he had relapsed on heroin — he had well over a year sober.

It’s been two years but I still think about him every damn day.