I attended an amazing Lego gala on Friday. 760 constructed Lego sets told the love story of a bride and groom who married in one of the most beautiful ceremonies I’ve ever experienced.

Yeah. I’m a sucker for Legos. Can’t deny that I love stacking and clicking those tiny annoying bricks together. I won’t mention the mini Lego kit I built today of Harry Potter practicing quidditch.

Forward momentum. Right?

I woke to grief on Friday. It was like a puppy. Well-meaning but so damn persistent. I accepted that it was there. I embraced it. Cried over it. Cried because of it. And waded through a day weary and numb. I tried to move forward but moreso shimmied sideways. Down the halls where clusters of students streamed past me in muted fingerprint tones.

I settled behind my desk and taught lessons and had students write introductory paragraphs that I numbly collected and settled into yellow and green folders. The green folder is beside me. I’ve read their work. Their attempts at fact-based grabbers. Their shifting through arguments and counterarguments and scrawled out three-point thesis sentences that state their opinions.

I pushed forward but drifted backwards because I kept shooing away the nagging grief puppy. And I eventually migrated to the Lego gala where I strolled through 760 Lego sets that I loved and wanted to play with and take apart and rebuild and read about and just stare at and love. I even strolled past the glued together bride of doom. And it’s still standing. Because it’s glued together.

On Saturday, I drived sideways. I took my daughter on an overly long drive through the mountains so I could buy a coat . I took unnecessary side-trips just so I could extend the drive through country roads and escape the highways and the hustle and bustle of people who cut me off even when I am pounding my horn at them because they’re about to hit my car. I lived in sideways steps as I traipsed through World Market and stared at Halloween and Christmas decorations. I walked sideways down a gentle slope to where the white folding chairs were set out for the wedding that was beautiful and sentimental and wonderful becuase someone I love who has hard such a hard time with love found the perfect person who complemented every aspect of her.

And I sat in my white folding chair and kept pretending that I was not slipping backwards in time as I thought about my brother. Who I so dearly miss. I keep wanting to call him and tell him about the nothings of my life. My students’ struggles with introductory paragraphs. The used Lego store that held boxes of my dreams. The fake-Lego sets that are exquisite and I really want to buy them, especially the cafe library set that was on the back of my name-card because the bride and groom felt it perfectly represented me (it does).

I want to walk forward. I live sideways because I keep stepping backwards.

I keep seeing Peter over the years. From the strong, proud man who was brilliantly intelligent and had a brilliant personality. I keep seeing Peter as the dementia gnawed away his brain and turned his back into a question mark and then settled him into a hospital bed.

I keep seeing my brother in those last days and I miss him. I miss him. I miss him and want to hold his hand or touch his elbow or pray next to him and pray with him. I miss our long walks together when he lectured to me about retirement and financial options and investing strategies. I miss our conversations about work and teaching and lesson planning and how he was so ambitious to bring new technology into the classroom.

I miss the adventures he took me on and the way my shadow bled into his and how our footsteps matched and then diverged and our rhythm melded once again.

I live in spiral shaped time. Fowards and backwards and sideways. All at once. A nautilus shell.

A nebula.

A conch with a hole in the side so the low thrumming call is a whisper of air.