blogwithvalor

It’s been just over a year since my brother passed away.

For me, that’s been a year of slow spiral of introspective depression. I’ve been trying to keep up appearances. Be there with family. See friends. But behind a lot of my thoughts has been ceaseless sadness.

We didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things near the end of my brother’s life. We grew up in the same household, but we became very different people. He and I would always exchange a look as kids and then teens when people would ask if we were twins or treat us like we were swappable. It happened so often. I’m not sure, but I think that may have pushed us in different directions, our desire to be seen as individuals. Or we were just wired differently from birth. It’s the old nature versus nurture debate. I’ve generally been a stronger believer in nurture shaping who we are, but I do believe that there are some things inherent to our minds that lead us more towards certain beliefs and behaviors. The mind is difficult to understand, and small differences could be as life-altering as being born tall or short.

To get back on track, over the last year, I have been reflecting a lot on the rift that grew between us. The seemingly insurmountable chasm that divided the paths in life we chose to walk down. It’s not important to know specifics, but we fought near the end. I thought it was just me initially, but I learned quickly that it was others close to him. It was after his initial diagnosis of cancer. So, maybe he was pushing people away in some subconscious attempt to ease the burden of saying goodbye. Maybe we just really didn’t see eye to eye. Whatever the reason, tensions grew.

Neither of us stopped seeing our parents. And he had two kids. Neither he nor I wanted to deprive them of family gatherings. We naturally fell into lock step with each other at being civil. The amazing part of our relationship was how easily we could do that, quickly be a cohesive unit. We treaded lightly around the topic that ignited our anger. My niece and nephew got an uncle that played with them and the family gatherings were pleasant.

I’ve mentioned this before in another post, but I thought we had time. Cancer is a bitch, but he was young, strong, healthy. He had options for treatment. I wholeheartedly believed that he had to be a prime candidate for beating this.

But he didn’t. And now that rift that slowly grew as we became adults is something I wish I’d paid attention to more. I don’t mean that I wish we walked the same path, thought alike, or mimicked one another. No. Our differences made us unique. We were the individuals we wanted to become. I wish that we worked more at creating bridges across that gap. That we shared our inner thoughts with each other more often, the good and the bad. I wish that he and I felt comfortable telling each other more. ‘But Valor, communication is a two-way street’. I know, I know. I, me, Valor should have done more if that’s what I wanted. But I didn’t want that at the time. I was okay with putting that off until the future. Because that was out there, our future. At least, I thought so.

In the end, I really just want what anyone who has lost someone close wants, more time. I want more time with him. More laughs, more Scrabble games, even more disagreements.

There’s no moral here. I’m not trying to tell you to beware of what I’ve done. Sometimes people grow apart. Sometimes relationships need to end. I don’t think ours needed to. But my point here is to release the things in my mind that have been on a loop. Maybe writing it down, organizing it into words to the best of my ability will help me to reflect better on it. And then I can start to move on from them.

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Blog Post Epilogue:

Last week, I had a dream with him in it. We were at my parents’ house. The family was all there. Not surrounding a dinner table or anything so picturesque. Everyone was off doing their own thing. I was meandering from place to place, like I would any other day at my parents. I don’t remember what I was doing or what was said between me and anyone. But I remember encountering my brother, Champion. Our conversation is lost on me, nothing important, but I remember it was a fairly natural feeling of rising tension that quickly cooled off and relaxed laughing. We were two people that’d known each other their whole lives and disagreed on something, but they couldn’t hold a grudge against the other for more than a couple of seconds before finding common ground. It was a one of those normal conversations we would have before his diagnosis. His kids, my niece and nephew, were the ages they are today. So, this wasn’t me dreaming of a memory. It was a glimpse into a world where tensions had never been raised due to a cancer diagnosis. We were just brothers having a boring conversation about nothing in particular. I didn’t realize how pleasant that dream was when I woke up, but when I think back to it, it makes me smile.