right as rain

How do you grieve someone you didn’t know? It’s coming up on a year since my brother died and an increasing unsteadiness has crept in over the last week or so. Death is hard to talk about and it’s even harder to talk about when people don’t ask. I wish people would ask about him more–somehow in not asking it only reinforces to me how little I had the chance to have him integrated into my life.

No one views him as my brother, considering he is my half brother and was raised by my birthmom. I’m too weary to explain the details of it all but I wrote a long post about it on another site I run, surrogacy-stories.com. His name is not one folks are used to hearing come out of my mouth. His face is not one folks are used to seeing in family photos. His stories are not one folks are used to hearing about. I am not used to it all. I am not used to him being gone. How do you grieve someone you didn’t know? We texted over his last birthday in March and, when I asked how he was, he said “right as rain”. I keep saying that idiom to myself. It repeats in my head. I envision getting a tattoo of it, despite having none, thinking it might help. It’s so overwhelming to grieve a missed lifetime. So I text and call and audio message my loved ones. I put myself out there where I can trying to expand. I keep trying to not miss more lifetimes.