Living In The Shadow

Prologue

"Good morning." Dad says as he sets breakfast on the table. I slide into my seat across from him. Mom comes down the stairs putting her earrings in.

"Hey baby." She says smiling at Dad. She sits as I start eating. Dad looks up from his phone with a wrinkle in his forehead and a tear in his eye.

"Damn..." he says shaking his head. Mom places a hand on his shoulder as she reads the message on his phone. She sighs and mutters something. I pick up Dads phone. The message reads, "Former Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin has passed on May 25."

I gasp silently. I look at Dad. He is crying with his head in his hands. Mom is sympathetically rubbing his back. I get up and go hug Dad. He pulls me into a bear hug, both of us crying.

He was Dads best friend throughout his hockey career and he was like a second father to me. A year ago, he had to move and I'd only seen him a few times since then.

I think about the times I would go to his house while both my parents were working. I would play with his dog Marky while he supposedly 'babysat' me. Though I think he enjoyed those times as much as I did. I laugh through my tears thinking of how we would play Mario Kart and he would get mad when I beat him. He would tell Dad that I was a cheater. He always had a humor. He would read me jokes off Twitter and have me clutching my sides from laughing. He would show me old pictures of him and Dad. He would practice with me. I'll never forget the day I finally mastered a triple deke. He had been helping me and was so proud when I did it perfectly.

He was my uncle, my second father. I sobbed into Dads chest. His own heart beat with ragged breaths as he too mourned.

The next few days were a blur. A plane to the funeral. The actual funeral. The fans mourning. The procession. The grave side service. The burying. Then the worst part.. the after moments. After that I would see things on Twitter and it would remind me of him. I would go to send it to him and it hit me all over again. A tidal wave every time I remembered.

One night Dad woke me up because I had been screaming and crying in my sleep. I had been dreaming of him dying. He had died in a car accident.

Somehow I had stumbled across the pictures of the wreck. You could see blood everywhere and the worst part was Uncle Geno's body splayed across the pavement. His arm was at an awkward angle and his brain was exposed through his cracked skull.

The images never left my mind. It only got worse when I would dream that it had been Dad. They were the worst nightmares I'd ever had and probably would ever have. I couldn't take it. Neither could Dad.

He was fine most days but for a long time he would get really depressed at night. He would take medicine and go to bed with tears. It broke my heart every time. After a few months, we had kind of moved on. But that's when my life changed.