I thought about you all day today; from the moment I woke up til the moment I went to bed. Actually, for days and days I've been thinking about today and thinking about you. Not that that is anything new, you run through my head all the time and the things I want to share with you. Things you'd find funny, like inside jokes that there is no one to tell anymore. Sometimes I try to tell other people but they never really get it. But hey, there is no one else whose name was my first word and the subject of my first sentance, so I forgive them. How could they possibly get it?!?!?
It's funny (peculiar, not haha) when a day just isn't a celebration anymore. A day of phone calls and well wishes and thoughts and milestones becomes dreaded. Silent. Almost overwhelming. The conversation I have with myself every day - wondering if you are really gone - lets the disbelieving voice be especially convincing today. Not possible, right? At least 3 times I traced the pattern of your number on my phone and wished that dialing would prove truth wrong. Because I am healing and therefore not totally crazy (though I get how it happens), reality sets in with its force and the debate stops. The loss of you always saturates me and every part of my life, but it is the moments at the end of the debate that it hits me the most. Waking up from a dream, shaken into reality, hard to breathe.
But this post isn't about me, it's about what happened today, and it's about you. Today after bootcamp, a stranger said "It's our little girl's first birthday today, and we brought cake. Did you want some?" "Hey", I said, "It's my brother's birthday today too!" They're strangers so I can say stuff like that and they don't get all awkward and fidgity, which is nice. So this is what I did. I ate that little girl's cake, but I pretended it was yours. I celebrated you.
For the first time in a while I remembered that you being gone is not the most important thing; the most important thing is that you were here. Your life was too short... like an adventurous, unique, funny, love-and-know-me-like-no-one-else, nature loving, brilliant book with a terrible and untimely ending... A loved, dog earred, familiar book that I will treasure in the deepest part of my heart until the end of time. Though I lament that others cannot read you themselves and you have become a story, today is not for wishing. Today is for being thankful for what I had. You; my brother and my best friend. If I thought words would convey you, I would type volumes trying to explain what the world has lost... But I don't think they'd get it.
PS: Readers feel free to leave a memory, if you so desire!
It's funny (peculiar, not haha) when a day just isn't a celebration anymore. A day of phone calls and well wishes and thoughts and milestones becomes dreaded. Silent. Almost overwhelming. The conversation I have with myself every day - wondering if you are really gone - lets the disbelieving voice be especially convincing today. Not possible, right? At least 3 times I traced the pattern of your number on my phone and wished that dialing would prove truth wrong. Because I am healing and therefore not totally crazy (though I get how it happens), reality sets in with its force and the debate stops. The loss of you always saturates me and every part of my life, but it is the moments at the end of the debate that it hits me the most. Waking up from a dream, shaken into reality, hard to breathe.
But this post isn't about me, it's about what happened today, and it's about you. Today after bootcamp, a stranger said "It's our little girl's first birthday today, and we brought cake. Did you want some?" "Hey", I said, "It's my brother's birthday today too!" They're strangers so I can say stuff like that and they don't get all awkward and fidgity, which is nice. So this is what I did. I ate that little girl's cake, but I pretended it was yours. I celebrated you.
For the first time in a while I remembered that you being gone is not the most important thing; the most important thing is that you were here. Your life was too short... like an adventurous, unique, funny, love-and-know-me-like-no-one-else, nature loving, brilliant book with a terrible and untimely ending... A loved, dog earred, familiar book that I will treasure in the deepest part of my heart until the end of time. Though I lament that others cannot read you themselves and you have become a story, today is not for wishing. Today is for being thankful for what I had. You; my brother and my best friend. If I thought words would convey you, I would type volumes trying to explain what the world has lost... But I don't think they'd get it.
PS: Readers feel free to leave a memory, if you so desire!
