Even as I mentally script this opening sentence, the lump in my throat swells and my eyes burn.

Last week, my brother died.

And even now, the words fail. I have been writing in my journal daily about Peter. Logging in my memories of him. Those final days and my final words and the love I have for him (present tense). I love my brother. And I miss the memories we didn’t have a chance to make.

The eulogies, the memories, the words in his honor are beautiful and touching. Several times a day, I return to his obituary and gobble up the kindness of others as they speak to my brother’s passion for life, his zest for adventure, his compassion for others. All truths.

My parents and my brother’s son wrote about Peter’s love for the mountains. God, he loved the alps. The higher, the better. Rise above the treeline, pierce the cloud layer, Peter was in heaven. The closer he could touch the sky, the happier he was.

But, for me, my brother is waiting for me at the creek.

When we were children living in the DC area, our house bordered on a county park housing a lake which was fed by multiple creeks that ran througout the year. Peter, in his adventuresome ramblings, found a creek not far from our home and must have traced its lengths many times, going from the suburbs through the woods up to where the creek fed into the lake.

I was not allowed to leave the house, much less go to the lake. Our mother was convinced that horrible crimes would happen to me because of my age (I was 9) or I was a girl. Peter: full freedom. Or at least our mother’s edicts couldn’t shackle him to the house.

But, one day, Peter invited me to the creek. Or maybe he dragged me down with him because, since he was my older brother, he was tasked with watching over me. Regardless, we left the well trodden paths behind our house and trudged through the woods, Peter in front of me with a long stick that he swished up and down to clear away the spider webs.

I was fearful. We were breaking the rules. We had escaped our mother’s boundaries and had strayed far from the muddy, leaf-worn paths that threaded from our culdesac to the lake. We were trespassing. We were not following the rules. We were

At the edge of a muddy creek that ambled over rocks and swirled over sodden branches and carved into the landscape. In Germany, the water was glass-clear and cold. In Northern Virginia, a dull red-clay brown slack with slimy mud and warm as the humid air. No reprieve. Nothing lovely. No alps or pine trees whispering with the wind. No sleek trout. Just crawdads that terrified me because they had claws which could bite and that caused blood.

Oh, and Virginia had snakes. Poisonous snakes.

No wonder Mom wouldn’t let me leave the house.

But I was tethered to Peter. I didn’t know how to go back home and was too afraid to dash through the woods by myself in case I did meet our mother’s dreaded villainous stranger or get lost or fall and get hurt or maybe even die. Because that was always the climactic ending to our mother’s beliefs about my future.

So, at first, I sullenly mimicked Peter’s graceful, darting leaps from embankment to the creek. Or maybe I was anchored by my gravity and couldn’t come close to imitating his light, Peter-Panish jumps.

I don’t know at what point my fear and trepidation melted away. But I remember the thrills of leaping over the creek, my feet rushing through the air and my arms pinwheeling. I remember my excitement when I flung my arms from my sides and balance-beam walked across the dead tree-bridges. I remember Peter’s pride when I scurried up muddy, sandy embankments, not freaking about the dirt caking my hands.

I remember us arriving at the meadow bordering the lake and my sense of frustration. The adventure was over. We were once more within a civilized landscape and the wild abandon behind us was now just a shallow slog of a creek populated by spiders and pinching crawdads.

The magic was over.

And yet, for the next seven years, I kept returning to the creek. At first, with Peter. And then, when he was working in high school or attending university, I took the neighbors’ kids. And then, in the late winter/early spring when I was in high school and too old for exploring my childhood haunts, I yearly returned to the creek because in its cold, trickling water, I could still find some living green, even it was just nothing more than simple creek algae. I went to the creek to escape the world, to find a quiet place where I fit and could blend into the background and beathe.

Twenty years later, I returned to the same creek, only in my imagination when I wrote Polishing the Bones. My main character Beth followed her older cousin, Liam, to the creek where he taught her the art of adventure and exploration.

And, as I realized how integral the creek was to me and how so many of the happiest and loveliest moments in Polishing were snitched from my experiences with Peter, I dedicated the novel to him.

Two nights ago, when I was writing in my journal, I thought about my Peter-shaped grief. A heavier plume of air, a man’s silouhette sitting on a fallen tree just beside the creek. Above him, wrens, bluebirds, and mockingbirds warble in the tree’s canopy and the water continues its burbling path to the lake. I imagine myself sitting beside him, trying to siphon into the warmth but meeting only stillness.

I love my brother. Not because he took me to the creek. But because he always held his hand out to met to take me along with him and to taste the broader expanses of life. He was my first role model. He was my measuring stick. He was my guide and my encouragement. He tormented the hell out of me. And when the class bully spat on my dress, Peter tore the hell out of that bully. He taught me how to drive. He coached me on what to say in my teaching interviews which helped me gain employment. He toasted me at my wedding. He held my hand while I labored with my first child. He sponsored my walk to Emmaus.

I took each of my children to the lake that was behind our house. I took them across the field and pointed out the creek to them. And I told them about Peter taking me there and how important it was to me.

The creek still flows. It still bears life and probably still has a bunch of crawdads in it.

Peter never did catch a crawdad for me. Or to tease me with.

But I finally got over my fear of them last year when I caught one in the Shenandoah River. It didn’t pinch me. And I didn’t die.

I think Peter would be proud.

I love you Peter. Wait for me by the creek. I still have some more adventures to go on. I’ll tell you about them later.