Dear Peter,

Monday, I turned 54. You will forever be 57. When we were kids, I used to count the years between us, hating those awkward nine months when you were technically five years older than me. I wanted to be closer to you. Wanted to be close to you. Wanted to be with you.

I knew my birthday was going to be hard, so I asked for nothing. I asked for quiet. I asked for peace. I asked for the shiva silence of just sitting in the quiet and not having to speak while also hearing the pain in my heart speak without words. And my wonderful family. Our wonderful family did that.

I spent the early afternoon of my birthday sitting on top of a mountain and watching the sun divide the clouds and spill light across the valley. I sat on an outcropping of flat, horizontal boulders, next to my oldest child and my big marshmallow dog and listened to the wind. I listened to the ruach, to the breath of God, the spirit of God as it shirred through the pine trees.

Pete, I miss you. I say this all the time and it just doesn’t lessen. I keep hating how time slips forward, carrying me with it and you are just a still memory stone, embedded in the creek with the water slipping over and around you. I keep looking over my shoulder. I can see you. Your cocky smile. Your piercing, intelligent eyes. Your limber body coiled and ready for the next adventure. Our next adventure.

I went to one of my favorite places on the Earth. Unlovely by so many standards but it is my sacred place. I am still recovering from what I think must have been the flu because I am exhausted all the time and cough up chunks of phlegm the color and consistency of swamp water. But on my birthday, needing a respite from the world, I loaded up my car and drove to my low lying mountain and crept up the easy trail and found my place. Found my perch. Found my rest.

I carried my pink bandana with me. The one I carried to your home when you were dying. The one I clutched in my crooked fingers and pinched when the emotions were too strong. You laid in the bed and dozed or stared blankly out the window and I sat in a chair and watched you and tried to think of things to say but could only lapse into silence. My pink bandana absorbed my tears. My pain. The words I couldn’t speak. The words I wanted to speak. And now, when the grief slips into my world, I tuck that bandana into my pocket. I have so little of you. Earrings. Memories. A book or two. But I have my bandana. I have you within its fibers.

And so I sat on the top of a mountain, next to my oldest child whom you held when they were minutes old. And we sat in the quiet silence as the wind pulsed through the trees.

In the book of Genesis, in the first verse, the Hebrew word for the spirit of God is ruach. It’s a feminine noun and it also means the breath of God. The wind of God. And as I sat on the boulders, I wept. Just long strings of tears that my pink bandana drank.

And, after long a long moment, my oldest child reached out and took my hand. And we sat together, on top of the mountain, and I wept, pressing the pink bandana into my closed eyes. And as I wept the wind, the ruach spilled from the trees and coiled around us. And embraced us.

We sat in silence. Watching the clouds stream over the horizon. We watched the clouds part and sunlight make heart shaped patterns across the valley. We watched the trees undulate as the wind rolled up along the trunks and pressed through the spring-spindly branches. And we remembered you with love.

Ruach, Peter. You are so much within the wind now. A breath. Here. Gone. Waiting in the corners of the world to spill over me again and remind me of your presence. I love you, brother.