My mother left with my four-year-old brother in the middle of the night when I was six months old, and it took two days before my grandmother found me alone in the crib. 

Since my youth, I have lived among the walking dead as a Zombie. I recognized their blank stare, their insatiable need to keep moving and the constant ache that never goes away. Zombies are known to overthink, drink, take drugs, work, sex, and people please. 

Zombies forget what they were like when they were alive so they linger in the background moaning and groaning about being alone without feeling blood race through their veins. They imitate people that are alive with the hope that they too will feel life.

Zombies do not understand they are the walking dead or remember feeling human or comfortable in their skin. Something happened and their exact time of death may no longer have meaning. 

Zombies are known to walk aimlessly searching, but for what they do not know. They are not aware that they are walking further away from life.

The only way for Zombies to breathe in life is to be still and start listening to heartbeats, laughter, singing, stories, smiles, and imitate those responses until it becomes comfortable and starts to produce a heartbeat.

For Zombies, grieving must be taught and life becomes the alternative. I finally hear myself crying alone in that crib, and at sixty-one years of age, I place the blanket over me and put my hand on my chest to feel it rise and fall.

I am alive.