I wonder why 5 years feels so much harder? Maybe even the worst (so far).

Is it because it is an increment of five and that feels big and scary? Maybe it’s because it just seems impossible to have lived half a decade without you. Almost a quarter of your life. Maybe it’s because it’s a prime number? Are they special or something? Or because of the way the number “5” seems to take up more space. It could be that my nerves are raw already. Or because this year I am practicing being more vulnerable. That I am “slowing down” (or playing with some version of it). That I have stopped running from all that has chased me in this last five years in an effort to heal and process and do you and I justice in this short time and space we get here. It could be that sometimes I am desperately combing through my brain trying to access as much of you as I can possibly find in there. It could be that other times I have locked you up so tightly so that I can do my job and build your legacy that I can’t find you in the ways that I want to.

It could be harder because as each year passes I get more and more afraid of forgetting the small details. The way your nose scrunched when you laughed or were disgusted. (I hear I do the same thing). The way your overgrown eyebrows stuck up everywhere if you didn’t properly comb them down. The way you always woke up frowning because you loved sleep (even on Christmas morning). The way your skin looked up close. The way your hand felt laid against mine as you asked for a “tickle”. The way you looked at me when I was being difficult or unnecessarily mean. The way you begged me to have more fun. The exact image of your big toe. The way your hair felt under my hand after you got a hair cut and I tried to mess it up. The sound your school bag made as it hit the dash of my first car and I yelled about how much cologne you were wearing all the way to school. The way you looked at me on that last evening I ever got to see your beautiful, magical face. The way you said “sis” and “Kels” and “Kelso”. The sound of your Sharon, Lois, and Bram tape echoing off the walls in our house late at night. I would complain that it was too loud but secretly I always loved falling asleep to something you could hear, too. Jumping from your bed onto a series of blankets and down over our staircase because, duh, the floor is lava. The hours and hours and hours of phone conversations where I begged you stay for just a little longer. Where I bargained and wordsmith-ed my way into convincing you for just ten more minutes that this could be better for you. The excitement on your face as we dropped 50 ft in the air on a ride at Disney and the conversation we had that time we had to throw away the Godzilla PlayStation game to “save our friendship”. I’m afraid I’ll lose any of it. Any single piece. That my fraying nerves will cause me to lose more than I might if they could just manage to hold themselves together. 

When I was about two years old mom was pregnant with you. When someone would ask me what was in her belly, I would respond in a low little grumble “a monssssster”. Jake, you were anything and everything but a monster (though it took a while to convince me when I was a baby). Maybe my little brain knew more than I could be given credit for. Maybe my brain knew that someday my unending love for my brother would be forced to transform into a grief monster.

The grief monster tells me that I am losing pieces of you every day. It tries to convince me that I could have done more or that I should never have left, even when I know that’s not true. It is equal agony and love. The grief monster grabs my ankles and forces me to trip over a memory of when you were in pain and not quite yourself. It reminds me of how much you suffered and of how much you lived and loved all in one breath. It has frozen me in the moment that dad told me you were gone and it has propelled me toward more love, vulnerability, and connection than I ever thought possible. The grief monster unleashed a hell on me that I was unaware you could be tangled in and continue to go on. It is fiery and it is complicated and it feels like blisters under my skin. It feels like a raw gnawing. It feels like love. Heidi asked me a few weeks ago, “If you could trade it all in, all the grief, would you do it?”. Of course I responded quite quickly with, “Not a chance.”. I will always choose this pain because it means that I loved you. It means that we mattered. It means that I got to be your big sister.

That you only got 21 years here is just so damn unfair to you and to everyone who knows you and to everyone that could have known you. That it was you that had to go and not me breaks my brain and guts me to my core because I know it was just a roll of a dice, the draw of a card, luck and chance and misery all tied up together. To see how many people have spoken your name in the five years since you’ve gone feels like a miracle and exactly what is supposed to be all at once. You live through so many words, experiences, and beautiful humans. Your best friends are growing older and to see them gather at events for your foundation feels like the most bittersweet thing I could ever swallow. To watch them grow and find love and meaning. To watch them suffer under the weight of your loss. To watch them be so brave. To watch the many, many amazing people who help us to carry your legacy continue to show up every year. The experience of loving and losing you still feels so unexplainable, though I’ve written many words about it.

The people who “get it” help tame the grief monster enough that sometimes, all I can feel is the love I had for you. Our littlest brother Abel seems to be a conduit for these moments. His perfect little nose and toes and the way he says “sissy” and “Abel’s brother Japud” feels like some sort of magical bridge that helps me access it. In those moments, I can feel it start right in the middle of my stomach. First it feels like a punch that leaves me gasping for air and then something changes. I recognize this feeling now as what it is like to love you. When my brain does that little switch, in the fleeting moments when it has the energy required to perform such gymnastics, the love I have for you and you have for me feels like the most radiant, perfect, warm and majestic light that envelopes me and makes me smile through the tears that are pouring from my face in buckets. It is so powerful that sometimes I have to wrap my arms around myself just to feel like I’m not going to fall apart. It makes up for every moment of pain I have ever experienced. It makes up for the extraordinary pain I will experience in the next five years without you. That’s how powerful you are, my brother. That’s how much your love weighs. That’s how much you matter. Fuck, you mattered so much. Thank you for being my little bro. Thank you for your life and your love.

With your heart,

Sis

(AKA Kels, AKA Kelso)