Ode to Zeek: Until we meet again

 I had never seen that much fog in my entire life in Youngstown. It was an incredible. I was thinking about calling Ce Ce, and maybe try to get into some trouble tonight, but crime shows and popcorn had taken over me. I would be in tonight, and, oddly, I wasn’t even mad about it.

Horatio was seconds away from catching up to the real killer on CSI Miami when my phone rang. It was my cousin Zeek.

Zeek was about a year and half older than me. We had grown up together, and I and his sister LM were attached at the hip. We all were really like brothers and sisters, or, at least, that what it felt like to me.

“Hey what’s up Eartha,”? He asked. He had pep in his voice. He just seemed a little happier than usual tonight.

“Hey Zeek. I’m not doing nothing just chilling,”. I said. “What you doing tonight,”? I asked.

“Nothing,”. He said. “I probably just stay in for the night, what about you,”?

“Me too, “. I said.

“Why don’t you come over, you ain’t been around here in a while,”. He said.

My cousin LM (his sister) and I were not on speaking terms, at the moment. Teen-aged hormones, and girly mood swings were to blame so I hadn’t been around really to visit. I was glad to see Zeek had noticed my absence though. He was always the one who tried to be the mediator between me and his sister.

“I’ll be around soon,”. I said.

“Ight,”. He said.

We said out goodbyes and hang up.

Four hours later my coma-like sleep was interrupted by a phone call.

“Who is calling me this late,”. I thought.

What I heard next was unimaginable.

In a treary-filled, half audible and screaming plea I heard my cousin LM’s voice pirecing through the other end of the phone.

“Zeek is dead Eartha,”. She yelled over and over again.

I hung up.

My phone rang again, and LM continued screaming “Zeek is dead, my brother is dead,”!

It was too surreal. This wasn’t a prank call. I walked over my mother’s room, handed her the phone, and crouched down in my hallway rocking back and forth. I was hoping this was all a dream. I didn’t believe what I had just heard. They were wrong. Why would they say such things about my cousin that weren’t true?

My mother walked over to me with a somber look on her face, and said “Eartha, Zeek died a few hours ago in a car crash in Millcreek,”.

“No he didn’t, Ma,”. I said. “I just talked to him, and he said he wasn’t going anywhere,”.

“He said he wasn’t going anywhere,”. I repeated over and over again in that dark hallway rocking back and forth. “They were all liars,”. I thought.

 The next day came, and everything was a blur. I went over my grandparents’ house, and my grandmother finally convinced me of the unconceivable. She told me Zeek was gone, and for the first time I had to believe it.

My aunt’s house never looked so unpleasant. My mom and my grandparents pulled up in her driveway, and there were about twenty cars outside her house. It was the worst day of my life.

I walked in and said nothing. I ran straight up to Zeek’s room because I knew he was still alive. I looked around his black and gold Pittsburgh Steelers inspired bedroom, and looked for any sign of him. I smelled his clothes and I looked under his covers. “Zeek was here,”. I thought.

I collapsed in the middle of that room.  I was unable to understand what was going on. I had just spoken to my cousin.  I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye .How was this possible?

I cried. I cried, and I cried some more until my aunt B came to comfort me. She had just lost her son, yet here she was consoling me. You could see the hurt though her beige eyes, but she was strong.

“It’s okay, Eartha,”. She said as she swayed me back in forth.

She held me in her arms while I cried myself into oblivion. I was lost. I was only 15-years old, and he was only 16-years old. We were good kids. We didn’t deserve this. How could I ever recover?

“Maybe if I had of just gone over there yesterday things would have been different,”. I thought.

Everyone in my family was blindsided by such a tragedy. It was beyond the unexpected. My cousin LM and I comforted each other the best way we could. Zeek and her were basically twins because they were less than a year apart so I can’t imagine how she must have felt. We were both devastated.

I was furious with God. I had been told he was a merciful God, who loved us so much that he gave his only son, yet he had taken away my innocent cousin. Zeek was a good boy, and there were plenty of murderers and killers out here still breathing. Why wasn’t his life spared?

The funeral was a blur. My body lay limp as my mother held me in her arms in the pews. She gave me Benadryl to calm my nerves because I was on the verge of a heart attack it felt like.

I, somehow, managed to say a few words at my cousin’s funeral.

“I wanted him to come back, but I know that would have been the greatest injustice I could give my cousin,”. I said as I stood at the podium staring at hundreds of familiar and unfamiliar faces.

I can still remember the day vividly as I watched them lay the casket in the ground. I still can’t fathom the words to adequately describe the pain and anguish I felt.

All I could do was remember the days when we were younger. The baseball games I attended of his, the hide and go seek games we played in the background, us teasing each other and so many more. I remembered his smile. The way he spoke. How he walked. Every moment we ever spent together seemed to flash before my eyes at that moment.

Everyone in the city knew what happen, but I wanted people to know who Isiah ZeekThomas truly was. I wanted the world to know about the day he sang Boys II Men’s “Moma” to my aunt, and how he always had a way to make you feel good. He was my cousin, but he felt more like an angel. He possessed a heart of gold that I wish the world could have seen. He wasn’t your typical teenager. He was so much more.

I miss him dearly. I never really spoke to anyone about the tearful nights I spent trying to figure out what happened, and how I vowed to never forget him.

I would have never guessed that seven years ago I’d be having the last conversation with Zeek.  I would still give my last breath just to go back in time when we were kids in the back yard playing foolish games. I don’t know why God called him back home, but the Terrell/Thomas family will never be the same without him.

I remember you Zeek, I ‘ll never forget you, and until we meet again know that I love you!                                                                                                      Sincerely,

                                                                                                               Your cousin, Eartha