On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We might be coming closer to terms with the truth; that you have stayed here for just as long as you were meant to. The air that moves around us has heard us declare it regularly; we’ve repeated it like a line that must be learned, and now we’re digesting it.

We came, like a band of thieves, back to the grounds for the first time since the interment, desperately searching out your name along the rows of bronze, feeling short of time. We scanned over crosses and praying hands with the map flapping like a flag in the wind; and then, the exclamation came.

We paused, each one of us, to watch the woman clasp her hands. She cried out in jubilation or exaltation or perhaps relief or grief or all. She was the first to discover you all over again, just like in your beginning and just like at your end. The company murmured that there was no mistake in it.

We made a chain of clutching hands and whimpered as an elder prayed over the letters that form your name. The woman knelt down to place a wreath against the metal and touched the plaque with both of her hands; the garlands were designed in some of your favorite colors and we heard her thanking the maker for having given you to us.