A Minute That Felt Like A Lifetime

For Anthony, my brother.

The average person usually disregards one single minute, but I remind myself every day to never forget that there are 1,440 minutes in a day, 43,830 minutes in a month, and 525,600 minutes in a year, meaning that throughout one year there is more than enough time for any event to occur. In any given minute a person can give birth to a new child, lose a job, or receive their diploma. In my case, one single minute had opened my eyes to the reality of life; one single minute, an attempted suicide had occurred. It is said that time can feel slow or fast depending on the given situation. This one particular minute, revolving around life or death, felt like a lifetime.
In the minutes before there had been a flood of tears flowing down his anger ridden face. The yelling coming from his lungs that held life, screamed words of no longer wanting to live. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” he cried out. This single sentence seemed to repeat itself in my head throughout the entire time. It left me wondering why anyone would ever want to end their life. I’ve heard stories of people stopping life short because of the hard life they had grown up with, but to call his life hard would be a significant lie. We have always lived what some would call a “white picket-fence” life, which may have been the very reason for his turning point. Jumping that fence and discovering the path of drugs is the reason why I felt this very minute was occurring. The pain in his eyes was what struck me the most, making his eyes almost unbearable to watch. The first half of this minute happened very suddenly. His breathing had begun to slow down, and all the pills popped had finally started to work on deteriorating his body. If you ever had that moment of feeling like you can’t breathe and find yourself gasping for air, then you know the exact noise that was being heard all around the room. A noise that was so surreal because I knew that in any given second one of those gasps could be his last. A slow tremble occurred throughout his body, and the veins containing our bloodline began bulging from his arms and neck. 30 seconds in when suddenly the 6 foot 5 frame 220 pound body came barreling to the ground.
He was always there, for all my 19 years of life, even at my very birth. We were inseparable when we were younger, but we slowly drifted as the years passed. Regardless of how far apart we had come, I was still connected to him and not one of a physical sense, but by our souls. My heart was beating at a pace I had never attained before and because of the connection we had, I felt as if I was dying with him. There were two other bodies present, and the screams of both echoed off the walls. For about 5 seconds there was a silence, a very eerie silence, as all our eyes watched the person we loved lay coldly on the ground. “Call the ambulance” were the yells that broke the silence and brought me back into reality. My cold quivering hands felt on his neck in search for the pulse of life. It was existent, although it was steadily getting slower and slower. That’s when I became struck with emotion, and warm tears began rolling down my face. Seeing him laying in front of me, unresponsive, with a hundred different chemicals running throughout his body was a truly indescribable and haunting image to witness.
In the next 10 seconds the unconscious had become conscious. From behind me a large bowl of ice water was thrown on top the unresponsive body. Some small beads of the icy water also splashed on to my skin, and in a sense I felt as if it had woken not only his body but mine as well. One large gasp of life came from his mouth and just like that, the greens eyes of my brother had opened. The coldness of the drifted water had also opened up my eyes in realizing the impact I was having on him. Without us around him, there wouldn’t be anyone near to help him. Just thinking about that terrifies me beyond words. What if there was no one to throw the water onto his body? The end result could have led to a terrifying finding of his chilled pale tan body. A discovery that could have changed my life forever.
From those 60 seconds that felt to last a lifetime, I learned to never take another minute for granted. When life becomes hectic, it's easy to forget to take the time, even if it's just a simple minute, and show a gesture of love to a person you care about. I am so happy that I was there during that moment, to show my brother how much I truly do love him. With that said there are times when I still blame myself for my brother’s intentions of harming himself because of the distance we had between us during that time. I often wonder if he would have still attempted to end his life if during that time we were as close as we used to be. Ever since the incident my brother and I have developed a much stronger bond because I quickly learned to never take him, or anybody else for granted.