“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 595 (Monday)

Life has had a new feel for several months. It started the first week of August when my family learned of my brother’s death. We began to process our shock and grief and broken hearts, and piece together the pain and turmoil that we can only imagine my brother was feeling to cause him to take his own life. But of course, we will never know. 

I wonder if my brother knew the joy he brought us. I wish we knew what he was dealing with so we could have tried to help him out of it. Now we are bracing for the holiday season, which is when we were usually all together. That is when our loss will be felt most acutely.

Moose in 2009 - love at first sight.

Two days after learning about my brother, Moose was liberated from his own pain and failed health. My heart shattered all over again. Since those days of early August, life has taken on new tones. Bleak. Gloomy. Heavy. Humor seems to have gone on hiatus. I see it and feel the shift, but I don't know how to change it. It seems like it just has to run its course. 

Events like forgotten lunch, stubbed toes, and low tire pressure that would ordinarily be dispatched and dismissed have felt disproportionately large. There is some value in the amplification of minutia, as it helps to crowd out the ever-present undercurrent of sadness. For a while anyway.

Before death and sadness barged in, the backdrop of life was general lightness with dust motes of darkness. Now the image is reversed and the current version is overall, general darkness with pinpricks of light and occasional brilliant beams of glorious sunshine.

Mini Moose - 2021

Some of the rays of light came from family and friends through cards, texts, calls, visits, flowers, and plants that deliver relief from the new weight of life and pierce the gloom temporarily. Long-distance kindnesses from far away friends have sent golden beams burning through the fog like a lighthouse. A recipe book from Indiana. A beautiful painting from Tennessee. Today, a package of sunshine arrived from Washington state.

My friend handcrafts tiny animals and she made me a mini Moose. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful, tiny delight that injected a beam of pure light into the day. Mini Moose reminds me of his picture on petfinder-dot-com when I first fell in love with him. I might have cried a little, and maybe more than once. But it’s a nicer kind of cry than the daily sad tears that randomly well up and leak out.

Friends and family can be such a blessing.