Grief and joy. Guilt and redemption. Pain and peace.

For the last eight weeks, I have lived within the ebbing of those dual emotions. Weirdly enough, I never felt guilty for laughing or for being happy. But I have found moments of genuine happiness to be stretched thin. I miss those moments when I could just laugh with wild abandon, when the mischievous side of me could peek out and I just allowed myself to be me.

It’s not that Peter’s death made me feel like I wasn’t allowed to feel happiness. I never feel guilty for being joyful while my brother is gone.

But I still shiver a bit when grief’s shadow walks past me, when the quiet coolness of her presence thins the air and the light grays a little. I pause in my moments and my thinking scatters a bit and I wait, scramble grabbing at my thoughts that flash and dim like fireflies.

I’m here they chorus to me. I’m here. Catch me if you can.

My taloned fingers pause in the air. Do I really want to go back to whatever thoughts that have just burst and now flit away from me? Do I really want to go back in time to whatever emotion was there before when a new one settles over me like a cape, a shroud, a shawl, a caul?

My emotions are double helixed, branded within me, my chemistry and my chromosomes.

It is a blinding staircase with millions of steps that continue to unfurl and unspool and fold inside themselves and I stand wherever I am on this spiraling staircase and look up. Look down. Be the vertical Janus trying to stare in both directions and just seeing

Stairs. Ever mounting and descending stairs.

I’m on the Escher staircase.

I am the Escher staircase.

I am the duality of emotion who is making peace with clashing proteins that do not want to meet or mate or consummate or checkmate. They conflict. They negotiate peace treaties. They resume fighting because something was ignited or said or triggered or I just breathed.

Or looked at my watch face and Peter’s picture, one of my favorite, grins at me.

I love my brother.

I say this all the time. But I do. And I won’t stop.

And I miss my brother.

And I say this all the time, and I yearn for the moment when this will be in past tense but it won’t becuase I won’t stop missing him. So I sit on top of my nest of eggs and brood and wait.