Why Ennui?

There are so many good things happening in our life. The kids are feeling good, making plans, moving, learning, doing. Buds and I have an exciting trip coming up at the end of the week. I'm ignoring the political realm right now, a privilege and a gift for my mental health.

Why couldn't I sleep last night? Why the feeling of anxiety and sadness?

This morning the dots connected. Today is the anniversary of my brother's death and the body has been keeping score. Five years he's been gone and the grief still catches me by surprise.

Since I had no luck retrieving his text messages from my last broken phone, I burrowed back into Slack (the communication tool many friends and family use to maintain an ongoing conversation.) I knew I had messages I sent to Buds as I sat up with Steven through the long nights at the end of his life.

And in the final hours:

I still wish I could text him to update him on our life. I wish I could fly out to visit him. I wish I'd asked more questions about his childhood, about stories of Dad, of my other brothers, of his first mom.

I can't, so I'll send some texts with lots of emojis in his memory, and video chat with our mom so we can talk about how he always liked to call so very early in the morning. (Most Sundays when I was in college he would call me at 6 a.m.) I'll text his kids a picture with him in it from their childhood. When I did that a couple weeks ago, my nephew was impressed I found one where Steven didn't have a cigarette. 😆

I miss him. It's okay to feel this way.