Really Lucky

Magic surrounds us every day. How blue the sky is. The way the light slants through the trees. The way the leaves laugh on the wind.

How one beam of sun can hit a prism and leave rainbow bright colors on the wall. 

Magic. 

And then something happens. Something that’s not fair. Something that’s confusing – children lose parents before they’re old. Parents lose children while they’re still young. 

And it never really seems to matter if it’s been fifteen, or twenty-two, or forty-nine, or seventy-two, or one hundred and five years – it’s never enough time. 

Never enough. 

Suddenly the Magic is gone. The sky clouds over. The light turns to shadow. There is no laughter. And the color seems to leach out of everything. 

But, one thing persists. One Magic we often forget about. One we don’t always notice. And that is that we exist at this exact time. 

Right here. 

That you and I exist, right here, together. 

That we get to love each other. That we get to experience and shape each other. 

He was one of the first of the cousin clan. Growing up with and being raised by the same people who would raise me. One generation flowing and overlapping with the next.

A peripheral big brother to me. So much older than me that he thought he was cooler. Not so much older, that he didn’t give me a brotherly hard time whenever he saw me. For thirty-five years of my life he was a recurring character.

And then suddenly his story line ended. Unexpectedly. Gone.

It doesn’t compute. My mind can’t make sense of it. It’s surreal and bizarre. 

I keep thinking about him as a little boy. Smaller than I ever knew him. His small arms hugging around his parents legs as he looked up at them. It doesn’t matter that their little boy turned forty-nine. He was their little boy just the same. Just as my boys will always be mine.

They lost their little boy.

We were supposed to get old together, he and I. We were the next generation. We had just been kids together – hadn’t we? Hadn’t that just been yesterday? Or, maybe the day before? It didn’t seem to matter that we were older now, or had kids of our own – I swear it was just yesterday.

We were supposed to go to funerals together. I wasn’t supposed to be going to his.

Not now.

He belonged to some of my favorite people.

And he belonged to me.

The blood of our shared ancestors roared in our veins. Shared people. Shared lives. Shared experiences. Shared memories. All threads from the same tapestry. The colors rich and warm. 

Differences don’t seem to matter as much anymore. Or disagreements. Or seeing eye to eye. Maybe they never did. There was only ever love between the lines.

Now all that’s left is the missing. The beat of my Father’s heart, an echo of his Brother’s heartbreak. 

It isn’t fair.

But, even still:

What luck we all had to exist at the same time. 

To love each other. 

To experience and shape each other. 

To be cut from the same cloth. Seams sewn with belonging. 

He said to me once:

You know, as you get older, you start to realize just how fucked up everyone else’s family is, and just how lucky we are. Really lucky to grow up in a family like ours.

Like, really fucking lucky.

I’m really lucky.

Loss stays with us, things are never the same. But maybe, someday, when it’s least expected, memories stop being sad, or angry with missing. Instead they might rise up in us with comfort. 

We were there. Together. Even still the colors are rich and warm. 

They lived. And they live still. As we live. An ember we carry within us. Burning steadily. Rich. Warm. And with time, maybe some of the Magic might return. 

The sky will be the blue of his eyes. His smile will slant through the trees. His laughter in the leaves. 

One beam of him will hit a prism, and leave rainbow bright colors on the wall. 

Part of the Magic.

Forever.

Just like he’s part of us.