November — He was missing.

Missing is a strange word. It sounds temporary. Like misplaced keys. Like a sock behind the dryer. It suggests retrieval. Resolution.

But this was different.

Received a call telling me that he was missing.

Sending my son to the police station to file a missing person report.

Asking friends on the social media to call me if they saw him.

That thin, metallic taste of dread sitting at the back of my throat.

Had a seizure that was attributed to stress.

I kept thinking, He’ll call. He always calls.

I told myself stories to stay calm.

Maybe he needed space. Maybe he was resting. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Hope is a stubborn thing. It will sit at the table long after the meal has burned.

December — He wasn’t missing.

He was at the veterans hospital.

The word found should have felt like relief. It didn’t.

Because being found is not the same as being well.

White walls. Fluorescent lights. Paper bracelets.

Then a transfer to a nursing facility.

Transferred. Such a sterile word. As if he were a file folder.

As if my brother — my loud, funny, rowdy brother — were something to be moved from shelf to shelf.

I remember thinking: how did we get here this fast?

When did we cross the invisible line between “He’ll bounce back” and “This looks serious”?

The holidays came anyway. They always do.

The world kept stringing up lights.

I kept swallowing fear.

January — I learned he was dying.

Not sick.

Not struggling.

Dying.

That word doesn’t knock. It enters and rearranges the furniture of your mind.

Everything tilts.

I tried to be strong. I told myself I was prepared. We are never prepared.

You can watch someone decline.

You can hear the doctors soften their tone.

You can see the machines multiplying like quiet witnesses.

Still, the finality of it punches the breath out of you.

February — He died.

I went to see him.

He didn’t respond.

I cried anyway.

Looking back, I think he was waiting.

Waiting to see his little sister one last time.

Waiting to know I was there.

Some bonds don’t require words.

Some goodbyes happen in silence.

No thunderclap.

No dramatic soundtrack.

Just a phone call I received as soon as I got home from visiting him.

And just like that, my crazy, hilarious, complicated big brother was gone.

My mother had three children.

Now I am the last standing.

There is something sobering about being the last branch on the tree.

It makes the wind feel stronger.

Grief does not move in straight lines. It lurches.

One moment I am numb.

The next, I am furious.

Then I am laughing at something he would have said, and the laughter collapses into tears.

Four months.

November — uncertainty.

December — reality.

January — dread.

February — absence.

The calendar kept turning as if nothing sacred had happened.

As if the earth did not just shift under my feet.

But something did happen.

A chapter closed.

A role changed.

He became an ancestor.

And I became the keeper of the stories.

Grief is not loud all the time.

Sometimes it is just the quiet realization that there will be no more phone calls.

No more “little sis.” No more “Marie.”

No more chances to say one more thing.

And yet — love does not die on schedule.

It lingers in memory.

In voice.

In blood.

It lingers in me.