Four months. Eight days. Hell in five minutes, it will be his time when he left.

I miss Peter. God, I miss him so much. Even though we really didn’t hang out that much in the last ten years. It’s the idea that I can’t reach out to him. To just call him up because that’s what little sisters are supposed to do though, in all fairness, he reached out to me a hell of a lot more faithfully than I did.

I’m sitting at a table, listening to the hum of traffic. A quiet, hollow alto hum and, one at a time, a tear wells up. I can see it’s luminous arc at my eyelid’s horizon. And then, with a blink, it slips down my cheek, cooling as it draws near my chin.

Weeping in winter is cold. It’s lonely. Even with a perfectly blue sky that is devoid of clouds, the temperatures are too low to give me the peace of sitting outside in the sunlight, maybe on the edge of my deck, and burying my head into my knees. Absorb the warmth. Weep out the pain. Find the steps to start walking again.

I should be:

1. Grading.
2. Editing student articles.
3. Calling about my dog’s upcoming knee surgery appointment time.
4. Depositing money in my daughter’s bank account.
5. Calling to schedule an interview for an article I need to write.
6. Writing a book review.
7. Finishing the long-overdue book for my book club.
8. Preparing for next school year.

Hell. Let’s add to that the daily chores. The fact that my refrigerator is filled with leftovers no one wants to eat and my daughter is coming home from university today. And this all turns into a to-do list that I can’t find the energy to do.

Yes. This is the face of depression. This is the face of grief. This is me sitting in front of a table, my arms stretched along its cool surface and me staring at an eggshell white screen as I write these words and feel their truths and just want….

I don’t even know.

I have quiet and peace.

I don’t want the bustling of people to descend upon my house or my classroom and do everything for me. That will not help. One thing at a time, I must strive to tackle and fix and plan and clean and scrub and write and write and write and remember my brother.

Remember his name.

The sound of his voice.

The look in his eye when I walked into his room when he was days from dying and he recognized me. A shimmer of recognition. A spark of happiness. And then just quiet. That dimness as the disease overtook his brain and he settled back into the tremors and oh, God, I really miss my brother.

I miss his cockiness. His assuredness as he gracefully danced on the edge of cliffs (yes, he really did that). His fearlessness at every challenge. An old dangling grape vine that he grabbed, sprinted to the edge of a road’s switchback, and swung on (until it snapped).

The time we hiked along and through an engorged, rushing creek-river. How he showed me to clamber over rocks and not be terrified at the constant spiders that were friggin’ everywhere and when he knocked one off its perch it landed in the water and did this eight-legged cartwheel and literally spun off the water and back onto the rock. Yes, that really happened too.

I miss the moments when he wasn’t cocky and arrogant and self-assured and came down to earth and spent time with me. Like when he drove three hours, one way, to spend the day with me while I labored in the hospital with my first child. My brother sat next to me and talked to me and in my imagination held my hand although I really doubt that happened but it comforts me to think of that so I hold onto that figment. But he really was there. He really did spend the day with me up until I gave birth at 7:51 and his camera was used to take my oldest child’s first pictures. And then my brother drove three hours, one way, to go back to his family.

My brother could find my tenderest weaknesses and my greatest strengths and could nudge both into hyper activity. My brother was my measuring stick and the chalice from which I supped. He was my sponsor for a life-changing Emmaus retreat.

He was my friend.

He comforted me during terrible times. And helped me find my footing through those moments.

And now. I sit in front of a table and write about him and it’s always in past tense and it breaks my heart and makes me ache becuase I can’t reach through that void and hear him once more, laughing at me in my waffling fears and taunting me to pick myself up and try once more.

I had a brother.

His name was Peter.

He was older than me. And smarter than me. And a bit of a jerk at times. And he taught so much. He challenged me to push beyond my fears and my self-created limits and to chase after the horizon with as much speed and stamina and passion as I could summon and then to try just a little harder.

I had a brother who accomplished so much and travelled throughout parts of the world and spoke different languages and absorbed information as quickly as possible.

And I am sitting here, in front of a table, writing about him and his adventures. And just outside the window, I can see the horizon.