Cool Story, Bro.

Occasionally I scroll back my Instagram feed to search for this photo.

I'm on fire when I find it, always with the number of weeks shown since I took that snap.

One hundred and ninety weeks ago my bro came up to visit me and we happened to both be happy at the same time. A rare occurrence - look at our smiles! The caption is a reference to one of our favourite movies we watched as kids, Stripes. Hey maybe that's why I love Bill Murray so much. My god Cam had the sparkliest smile in all of Sparkland. He stayed five hours and we talked non-stop like we always did. We talked until I said "Shit I have to pick the boys up from school!" And he laughed. I was never supposed to be together enough to have children but there they are, my two shining lights.

The intense pain that always burns inside of me since Cam's suicide can vary from a hot ember to a blazing furnace. My life took a sharp and jagged turn after he left. Life is ABSURD. I talk to him a lot because I love saying his name out loud. I love it when other people are brave enough to say or write his name to me. Cam was so smart, so fucking funny ... a wit that rivalled no other. He had a huge beautiful sensitive heart. He was kind, respectful, beautiful. He was a sensitive Soul.

Once on holiday in Hawaii Cam was about four years old and caught his reflection in the mirrors in the Royal Hawaiian's fancy hotel room and was fascinated by a long line of himself. "Look." He said in wonder. "Thirty Cameron's!" 

I didn't just lose Cam. I lost all thirty of him. I loved them all equally. He was one of my best friends. I don't write about him much anymore because I can't. Some things just can't be described with just words. Sometimes I feel like I lose him again and again every day and sometimes I realise he was never "mine" to lose and sometimes I'm jealous because he left and I stayed and sometimes My Higher Self is all, "What can you learn from your brother's death, Eden? From his life? How can you turn this around? How can you make it meaningful, worthwhile?"

Because every life has worth and meaning. Surely. (They do, and stop calling me Shirley.)

We are so many people in one. There's a wealth of incarnations of ourselves we can be in this life. I'm so sad he got stuck in a broken one. I'm doing everything I possibly can to honour him and my children by living the very best incarnation of myself I can be.

Because there's thirty Eden's. There's thirty of you, too .. reading this right now. How are all of you?

I'm doing ok. Listening to Sia on repeat, writing articles for money to pay my rent and keep me out of trouble. Going to the library, going to meetings to talk about Spiritual shit that doesn't ordinarily get talked about in society by the "normal people."

When Cam was a baby his bedroom was up from mine and sometimes in the middle of the night his cries would wake me up before they woke our mum up so I would run to him, to put his dummy back in, soothe him and make sure he was ok. I didn't like him being upset or sad or troubled. Maybe if there is an afterlife he keeps running to me. Maybe it's his turn to help .. maybe he doesn't like seeing me or all the other people he loved and left upset or sad or troubled.

That'd be cool, bro. Way cool.