On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We can’t see the future, we think about what it should be, but we never get it right! That is what our grandmother said. I sat diagonally on the bed, across from the place in which she was always so grandly positioned. There was a silence between us so heavy… and looming somewhere in our environment was the threat of collapse, the demise of poise and composure. But neither of us would succumb. Her legs were elevated as she sat upright against the headboard. Her feet were covered with a pair of those colorful silky socks she was known to wear. And her hair was tied inside matching material just above her traveling gaze; eyes that had seen the better of nine decades now looked equally pained and puzzled. Hadn’t you and I discussed her great departure? You and I. How we would shudder to even contemplate that coming time and say in those somber and quiet talks that we would have to prepare ourselves – what a loss it would be! We would hardly know how to bear it. But you preceded her. And now I was there sitting alone with her, diagonally across from the place in which she was always so grandly positioned, diagonally still from the chair where you would sit close to her by the bed. I recalled how they had held her by each arm and walked slowly with her, cane and all, to view the last of you. She cried out your name then, and the room instantly became silent.