Thinking of You Today

I almost didn’t send it.

I spent most of the day going back and forth in my head, like I always do when it comes to him. Drafting messages I would never send. Deleting them before they could exist anywhere other than my own thoughts.

Two years is a long time to not speak to someone who once felt like part of your nervous system. Long enough that silence becomes its own language. Long enough that reaching out feels less like a simple act and more like crossing a border you’re not sure you’re allowed to cross anymore.

But today is April 20th.

And there are some days that don’t loosen their grip just because time has passed.

So I sent it.

No questions. No opening. No invitation for anything more.

Just a small, steady offering placed gently where something much bigger used to live.

I don’t expect a response. If I’m honest, I wouldn’t even know what to say if I got one.

Because this wasn’t about reconnecting. It wasn’t about fixing anything or reopening doors that have been closed for a long time now. It was just about this quiet, stubborn truth that has outlived everything else:

He is still my brother. I still love him.

And today, he is somewhere carrying something heavy, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him carrying it in a world where no one knows what this day holds.

What’s strange is how much I forget these days.

Whole seasons blur together. Conversations dissolve. Even things that felt important at the time slip through me like water. I don’t know if it’s the overwhelm, or the way my life has stacked one hard thing on top of another, or if my brain just started protecting me by letting certain things go.

But I remember Oregon.

I remember it like it happened yesterday.

I remember the silence on the plane—thick and unspoken, like we both knew there weren’t words for where we were going. I remember the way he held himself together at the funeral home, steady and distant, like if he loosened his grip even a little everything might fall apart.

I remember the moment it finally broke.

We were in the hotel room, watching a movie neither of us cared about, and the tears came quietly, almost like he didn’t want to disturb the room with them. No big collapse. No dramatic unraveling. Just the kind of grief that slips out sideways when it can’t be contained anymore.

I remember the redwoods.

The way we laughed there, like something in both of us could breathe again for a moment. Like grief had edges you could step outside of, even if only briefly. I remember looking at him and seeing something familiar again—not just the weight, but him.

And I remember the moment we both knew it was time to go home.

That quiet, mutual understanding that whatever had happened there didn’t fix anything. That the world we were going back to would still be waiting for us, unchanged. That whatever this was—this closeness, this shared experience—might not follow us back.

It didn’t.

We didn’t come back the same.

I’ve felt a lot of things about him since then.

Grief.

Anger.

Frustration.

Confusion.

There were times I didn’t recognize him. Times I didn’t understand him. Times I wondered how someone I loved so much could feel so far away, and times I wondered if I had done something to deserve that distance.

There were moments I hardened. Moments I let myself feel the full weight of being left out, shut out, forgotten in ways that didn’t feel accidental.

But underneath all of it—under every version of the story I’ve told myself to make sense of it—there’s been this quieter, more honest truth:

I love him.

And I cannot save him.

Not from the pain of his life. Not from the things he carries. Not from the ways he’s chosen to cope or disconnect or disappear.

There is no version of loving him that changes that.

And maybe that’s the hardest part.

Because love, for me, has always come with a kind of instinct—to reach, to fix, to stay, to make sure no one has to carry something alone if I can help it.

But this is different.

This is love with boundaries. Love without access. Love that doesn’t get to be expressed in the ways it used to be.

So today, it looks like a single text message sent into the quiet.

No expectations. No follow-up. No outcome I’m waiting for.

Just this:

You are not forgotten. You are still loved. Even from here.

And then I put my phone down.

Because some forms of love aren’t meant to be received.

They’re just meant to be sent.