When you Didn't Stay

I know I don’t write to you much these days. Sometimes I fear that it’s because a part of me wants this all to matter less but then I realize that it could never be any less than monumental and permanently altering in its continuous enormity. When it seems like I’ve done all my crying, when it feels like you’re fading into fog…a memory, a moment, a gesture or image so seemingly simple and mundane in the palest of ways, suddenly transforms to the incongruous and I am snapped back to where we were…where I held your hand and the sharp, stark contrast of what had made sense moments before ripped at the places in my chest and under my flesh as we gathered around your fading mortal light. We said goodbye. I told you it was alright. I told you to go. And when we stepped away for what seems like a blink…you did. You went. You filled the whole of everything with your spirit, save that one place; that one small room where we wailed over your shell.

I saw a beautiful film tonight and I shan’t spoil it for those who’ve yet to see it, but the things it brought back hit me like a tidal wave. A character by a hospital bed did exactly what I believe had to do with you. He gave the person in the hospital bed permission to go. And with his words, grief seized me. Not knowing whether the ailing character would pull through was not what held me in that space. It was remembering those words I uttered to you on your deathbed. It was my love for you. My unparalleled, undying love for you, baby brother that allowed those words to come. Your freedom was so much more important than my pain and I knew it even through the loss and fear that screamed through my mind and filled every cell of my being.

You didn’t stay. You couldn’t stay. And not a day arrives in which I think it could have been different. I wish it could have. I wish you were here to bounce your little nieces on your giant knee. I wish we could have enchiladas and laugh as you do your white-guy-dance to Spaceghost’s Musical Bar-B-Que. But as Mom used to say to me, “If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” and I’m sure you know that it only made me wish that wishes really were horses because I love them so.  Some things, no matter how tragic, how painful, how scarring, just have to happen sometimes. Whether there is warning or not, these things simply cannot be prepared for and even after all this time, though the frequency has lessened, it grips me, it shakes me to my core, and it makes e wish I could have just one more of your gentle-giant hugs. Remember kiddo, it takes a powerful force to make me sob and shake in a movie theater with an audience surrounding. You are a powerful force and my love for you is just as great.

I miss you more than a thousand poetic and descriptive words could ever touch upon but even more importantly, I am proud of you. I hope that one day I make you proud in return.