Connection

40 years ago my mother’s death split my family apart like a land mine. We were never the same, never quite as close, never fully a family. Until my brother died 10 years ago, and we realized what we had missed. Everything. The day to day of sharing and interacting with those who have known you your entire life. The banter. The history. The merciless teasing. The understanding that despite all else going on in the world, your siblings are there.

For a very long time, we were not there. We floated in and out of each other’s lives, never getting too close, never risking the pain of loss perhaps. We married. Our children were born, and we raised them. We lost our father more than 20 years ago and that seemed like perhaps the end of our family. But we continued to hang on by threads.

In 2016, my oldest brother died. Marc. My beautiful, troubled, tormented big brother. He went through at least one year of wretched illness alone, never reaching out ,and making contact so difficult that we didn’t try as hard as we should have to reach him. In the end, he died with three of his siblings (and one wonderful cousin) there with him, holding his hands, loving him closely as we should have all along. His last breaths became the impetus to our reuniting after so many years. 

It’s a testament to him that the four of us (and our spouses) get together most every year now. We drive and fly to a common location, this year in New Hampshire, to cherish each other, remember our childhoods, share our families, help each other connect to our early childhood dreams, speak in awe of our children and grandchildren and find our parents in each of them. We build each other up, each year forging deeper connection amid lost time, in hopes that it is enough to fill the many missing years.

I think often of my mother, of Rachel, and how she would love that we have found our way back to each other. I know this because there is truly nothing more important to me than that my own three children remain strongly and deeply in each other’s lives, a connection to their beginnings, to us, to something far more rooted than ambition, wealth, fame, or success.