02/09/2025
30 August.
Death is not easy and I still cannot pretend it is. Last week, while knowing it was my brotherโs birthday but not registering all the feelingsโฆ I found myself uncomfortably face to face with this looming threshold. Death, dying, eclipse, alchemy, transformation, shift, fearโฆ. Admittedly fear won out more often than not and served as a good reminder of practice, ritual, and trust. As I write this, 22 years later it is โeasyโ to see how life has unfolded in the aftermath of such a shock to the family system. While I write this birthday card to John, I remember too all my dear sweet humans this very year who have had to move through the unexpected transitionโฆ. and I cry with you, because I know what it feels like, to wake up one day empty and angry. Somehow, when you would never believe itโฆ there is growth and you smile again.
The eldest, an only child for three years, all of a sudden became guardian of routine gone awry (ideas his little sister had of which he didnโt approve), a guide in all of our imagination and play, and the one who showed me everything I knew for easily the first decade of my life, living a simple life on an island.
High school +Uni are funny recollections of two people trying to figure out who they were, while being pulled always into the family constellation, not understanding how someone so different could belong to their star cluster. Ultimately we were, somehow and in funny ways - along with our younger sister - always each otherโs first phone call: what one of our parents just said or did, 9/11/2001, โI need help with the truck.โ โCould you bring us beer for me and my friends?โ โHow do I pay my electric bill?โ
Frankly, it has always been easy to know, trust, feel that Uncle John has his eye on us all. Not to mention, the uncanny characteristics of my nephew and now even my own third born who has strikingly similar contours. Eyes, they say are the doorway to the soul, and there is no question that my brother and I have blue eyes that may have the key to deeper wisdoms.
... the last bit, is in the comments ....
๐๐ฆ๐ฏโจ๏ธ
Steph
