Misprinted Lies (Alice in Chains/Bruno Mars)

Erased Years

Jerry turned around and faced me. We were all dressed up for the memorial service. "Okay then, let's go," he said, putting an arm around me.

I was standing in between Jerry and Mike holding each of their hands. I closed my eyes and pretended he was here, that he was holding my hand instead.

"Come with me," Jerry whispered, bending slightly to get close to my ear.

I let go out Mike's hand and just held onto Jerry's. He brought me back to the limo we came in and got into the back. I stared out the window, pretending to see his face. I almost saw his reflection in the glass but Jerry gently brushed my cheek with his fingers.

"Honey," he said, his voice cracking. "It's okay to cry."

He pulled me in closer and had his hand in my hair, his tears falling onto the top of my head.

"I can't...I can't...I can't do this, Uncle Jerry," I cried into his chest.

He didn't say anything. I wanted him to say something, but he didn't. A few weeks later, I sat at the kitchen counter with a brand new bottle of pills, struggling to open them.

"Lemme try," he said, holding out his hand.

"No," I said trying very hard, "I can do it."

The bottle cap flew and the pills exploded all over the kitchen. He helped me collect them all and sat down next to me at the counter. I stared at the pills. Dad's face appeared on the clear plastic bottle, and then again on the glass of water, smiling at me. There were no clues that told me I was about to cry. I cried all the time, whenever and wherever. Jerry leaned over and kissed a stream of tears beginning to fall down my cheeks.

Later that night, he walked into my bedroom and stepped inside until he was face to face with me. I felt so empty that everything I ever loved didn't matter. I didn't even want to look at the Nintendo and all the little things that used to make me happy.

I turned my body around so I faced the wall. I couldn't hold my body down. I jolted up and down with every cry. Jerry pulled up my shirt a little and rubbed my back. It soothed me a little, then a little more, and eventually soothed me to sleep.

"I miss him, Uncle Jerry," I sobbed the second before I closed my eyes.

"I do too, sweetie."

He never left. Every night he slept next to me, holding my hand, as he lay on the floor. It didn't fix anything, but it helped.

The stress and pain from losing Dad was unbearable. I'm almost certain his death caused my Crohn's to get even worse. Jerry did all he could to distract me from Dad, but I saw his face everywhere. I saw it especially at night in the mirror before going to sleep.

"You're going to be okay, Lily. I know you will," his voice said.

By the time I found the words to prove him wrong, he was already gone. I kept him alive in my head through my dreams, every single night. As the weeks became months and then years, I had to force him alive again but still, only in my head. I wrote him letters every night. Jerry took me out to buy more and more picture frames to keep the memories alive. The good memories needed to remain real, not the last image I'll ever have of Dad that never leaves, even when I close my eyes.

What ended up being more important to me though was his music, and not Alice in Chains music, either. That would tear me apart.

Jerry took me to a music store in Seattle, helping me find all the CDs Dad used to blast when I visited him. It was such a wide collection with Slayer, Suicidal Tendencies, and Elton John. You name it and my dad listened to it. He was so open-minded about music, people, and pretty much anything. Not everyone knew that. He didn't have enough time on Earth to prove it of his amazing qualities. People just made assumptions about him, never really getting to know him.

Jerry took me to L.A with him in 2005. We had to get away from Seattle. I even spent time with some of his dad's family in Oklahoma for a couple of months at a time for the next two years as he did some shows with the leftovers of Alice in Chains include some benefit concerts. Being with Jerry's family only excluded me, though. The land in Oklahoma was too flat and boring. It didn't have the blue and purple looking mountains and the forests that stretched for miles. 

I missed the years I would have had with Dad that were so quickly erased and taken away. He had so many projects he was working on to show the world. The amount of paintings and lyrics littered around the house was amazing. He was even working on a book, telling his favorite stories and talking about people who he'd always looked up to. He just wanted to prove to everyone that he was more than what the media said he was, which was a junkie. I'd wanted to find the parts of the book he'd written so far, but no one knew where they were, or at least no one would tell me.

Jerry broke the news to me that I was going to school in August 2007. I never thought I'd see the day I would be attending an actual high school. I begged to be home-schooled. I had never been so nervous to be around people my own age, but Jerry kept telling me that spending time with other kids would be helpful. He promised me that everything would be okay, words that no longer trusted.