Little Gifts

and the shared love of a stranger

“I miss him.”

Lynn’s text message popped onto my screen in the middle of my workday, interrupting some menial task I was killing time with. Her next message followed quickly: “I think about him every day.” And another: “I will never forget Chris.”

Glad for the distraction and acting out of habit, I tapped the heart emoji on her text bubble and replied, “Me too. Thank you for remembering him. It means a lot.”

She and I first met over text messaging, after I’d received a call from a hospital alerting me that my brother was in critical condition 800 miles away, dying from COVID-19.

She ran the group home out of her own big house—the one Chris and five other men had chosen to live in. She told me she’d been trying to find my number for the two weeks he’d been suffering alone in that hospital. He had brushed off her pleas to see a doctor when he first got sick. Eventually, she called the ambulance herself.

But two long weeks passed before anyone could track down a relative. Only when she broke privacy rules and searched through his room did she finally find my number—and gave it to the hospital staff.

The hospital called immediately. Time was short, and they needed someone to make decisions. Someone to be with him so he didn’t die alone. As the only surviving family member—and his big sister—I intended to be there for my brother.

After he passed, I let her know and thanked her for all she’d done for him. Then her messages flooded my phone. I heard the guilt in her words on the screen—for the time that had passed, the time he and I didn’t get, for waiting too long to insist he go to the hospital. I assured her none of it was her fault.

She’s texted me out of the blue every few months in the years since his death. Her messages showing me how much she cared for him—really, for all the men in her charge. When I visited him a couple of months before his death, he told me how much happier he was living in that group home than he’d been in his own apartment.

My phone buzzed again.

“I have a picture of Chris on my fridge that I look at every day.”

I watched as the screen indicated an incoming photo. There he was—my baby brother, smiling from a Polaroid pinned to Lynn’s fridge with a magnet.

The tears in my eyes confused me. Was I still sad? Had she made me sad? I returned to my phone, not wanting to leave her hanging.

“Thank you for sharing that, Lynn.” I texted back after adding a crying emoji.

“I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

I sensed her worry—her fear of making a wrong step and putting our fragile relationship at risk. I assured her they were happy tears.

It’s been almost four years since Chris died, but the reminder that someone else remembers and misses him is a gift I didn’t know I needed—until I received it. He existed. He was real. He was my brother. I was there when he was born, and I was there when he died—those last hours etched forever in my heart and mind. I’d let him know he was loved; I’d let him know it was okay to go.

Some days, though, the silence of his absence on this planet is deafening.

He existed. He was real. He was my brother. And I miss him.

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I am humbled to share that another essay of mine about Chris, “One-Hit Wonder” was recently published in The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope, edited and published by

Lynn Shattuck

and

Alyson Shelton

as part of the

The Loss of a Lifetime

grieving and healing community. Finding support in that community has been such a blessing to me since Chris died.

Losing a sibling is hard. You are not alone.

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More Essays from Light Into Dark Places:

The Caretaker

A Christmas Loss

The Smell of Cilantro