Leonard, tomorrow night, it will be one week since your brother died. I wanted to write something to you.
We did not go to California as often as I wish we had. E, A and I spent less than 2 weeks all together, probably, with Steve. Over the years, it was a handful of times, almost always in the company of the entire family.
Yet all three of us have been deeply affected by Steve’s death, our father-in-law’s, our grandfather’s, brother. And I think it is because we know how special the relationship we have with our sibling is.
I have thought about it many times over the years, because ERI was diagnosed with what we thought was a terminal illness when she was 12 and almost died when she was 16. In the years since then, as her health has declined, I am aware of the things I share with only ERI. She and I remember Mama’s laugh, the stray cats and dogs always making their way into our house, the way Grandma’s apartment smelled in Santa Monica, how Daddy required shoes be worn at all times and how Mama did not require shoes unless he was home. We also both remember a lot of sad, hard stuff that we cannot explain to anyone else. She – and only she – knows what it took for me to leave my mother’s house. There’s no one else who sounds like me and looks like me, the way she does. And whichever one of us dies first, the other one will be left alone.
But, as we are reminded constantly in Judaism, we are not alone. And not because God is with us (necessarily) but because we carry the person we love inside us; we carry our brother or sister inside us. I think especially our sibling, we carry in our hearts and minds and in everything about who we are, and how we live in the world. In ways we don’t examine or fathom until we face losing them.
So even though E and A and I did not know Steve very well, we understand how much our brother or sister mean to us. We feel the profoundness of that relationship and understand the depth of your loss in a way we did not before. We are so very sorry for your loss, Leonard.
Love,
KML