Well, Pete. Seven months. One day.

Damn, I miss you. Sitting here in my office, spring just around the corner, and I am consumed with thoughts of you. I have you as one of my favorite pictures on my phone. Because of that, randomly, your face pops up on my watch. I’m in the middle of teaching and I check the time and there’s your cocky smile. Your self-assuredness.

I tuck you into the back recesses of my mind. Not because I don’t want to think of you. But because, sometimes, I can’t afford to. Becuase when I do, I get this weird pickly face as I struggle to control my emotions. And I can’t talk because, damn it, I’m not going to cry every single time I think of you even though I really do.

My oldest child’s birthday is tomorrow. Over two decades old. You were there when they were born. You drove three hours, one way, to sit in the hospital and hold my hand. I remember the moment you entered the room. Dressed to teach and, instead, in my hospital room. I met your son when he was three hours old. Three hours. The English teacher in me is searching for meaning. I can unravel it. I don’t want to cheapen it. It’s just a number of hours.

I miss you, brother. Since your death, I have finally found my confidence. I wish we could hang out now that I’m not apologizing every three seconds. You always told me to take responsibility for my actions. And given we watched adults never say they were sorry, I took that lesson to the nth degree. But that nth degree was too far and too often and I stopped believing in myself because a lack of confidence meant not apologizing and apologizing was my comfort zone. I’m sorry that I’m babbling. Actually, I’m not. I just thought I’d toss that in for old times sake.

I’m staring at the sky. Clouds the color of thin steel wool hover over the house. When I conceptualize the location of heaven, naturally it’s above me. But I have such a hard time thinking of you in that space. Not that I think of you in hell or think that you belong there. By puttin gyou in Heaven, you really really really are gone. And I get that you are dead. I accept that. But I still struggle with that.

Do you know that every now and then I start to pray for you? Like you are still alive? I’m asking God “to please bless Pe…” and I stop. And then I revise it to “please bless Peter’s family.”

I hate that the world just keeps spinning without you. That as I move and shift that I can’t call you up and ask you advice or call you because usually you call me and I feel like a crummy sister for not calling you. I keep trying to not to want to reach through time and space and shake you loose from your disease. Just one good head shake and you’d be cured and be fine and we could spend more time together. We could go hiking or walking or whatever. I don’t care if you lecture me more on retirement and investment strategies. Just so long as you are live and I’m not writing to you like this because I hate writing to you like this because there’s no point but it’s the closest I can get to just talking to you one more time.

I count. I wait. I push forward and then sit my ass down and stare at the sky and the trees trembling in the wind. I pet my dogs and hug them close because they don’t expect me to do anything else but love them. I clutch the pink bandana that I carried the entire time I was with you when you were in your last days and I have washed it multiple times but I still have this absurd feeling like it has your DNA even though it never touched you and, if anything, I carry our shared DNA but it’s not the same because I am not you and you are not alive and I’m writing to my computer while listening to the traffic rush past my house.

I am going to go back to the creek, Pete. You took me there when we were kids and I went there by myself to escape from everything and find a hint of life in a world that seemed so devoid of life. I am going to go back to the location of Polishing the Bones and I won’t find you but I will carry you with me. Even if it’s in the droplets of blood rushing through my fingertips and the memories that will wash over my perceptions and change the dimensions of what I’m looking at.

You’ll be there. You won’t be there. But I will still have the pink bandana and my memories and my novel. And in that way, I will hold your hand once more.