He Would Have Been Forty

He would have been forty…

That single thought has perseverated through my mind this week.  It has consumed my every waking moment leaving me with nothing left but the reminder of this immense loss I have sustained.   Although, I have felt like I have been making very positive strides toward learning to live without the other half of my soul, it has all come crashing down and I am once more faced with immeasurable sorrow and grief.  I feel like I am in a sinking ship, slowly spiraling to the bottom of an angry sea with no hope left except perhaps some peace when I finally reach my destiny.

I have spent the past eight months, making my best attempt to get through losing the one person in my life that I could depend on, my baby brother.  Although we were almost six years apart (and he never let me forget that), we were attached at the hip from the day he was born.  I became his surrogate mother; he was, in essence, my first baby and I loved him unconditionally as any devoted mother would.    He was my heart and my biggest fan, as I was his; and we shared the same hopes and dreams for not only ourselves, but our families as well. 

Just last year, at this very time, he and I were joking about the fact that he was finally going to be entering the forty club this year, just like I had a “few” years earlier.  I told him that we were going to do something huge and it would be a celebration to be remembered.  I told him that nobody would ever be able to forget that he was finally going to be considered “over the hill”, just like the rest of us.  He just laughed and told me it didn’t matter because I was almost fifty anyway (I’m not) and age was, after all, just a number.  Then he turned to me and said something that I will never forget…“It’s not your age, but, it’s how you live life with the time you have that matters”.  How true those words have turned out to be.

However, this year, instead of planning our big blowout celebration that we talked about only a year ago, I find myself simply just trying to “get through the day”, as I am relentlessly inundated with precious memories and overwhelming feelings of sadness.  This year, instead of being able to make fun of him about HIS age for once (which I was really looking forward to, by the way), his daughters and I stand at the edge of a long pier, on what turned out to be a gorgeous, sunny day; releasing “Over the Hill” balloons, hoping they make it to heaven in time for the party we envision he will be having with other family members who have passed before us.  My brother’s milestone may have never been attained, however, it just seems fitting, for anyone that knew him, that he, of all people, would stay forever young.  This year, instead of being able to spend the day with him, like I had planned to do, I find myself flooded with cherished memories of a beautiful soul, taken away too soon; one, in which I was very blessed to have had the opportunity to spend the last thirty nine years with.  And that will be enough to get me through this day.  It simply has to be.