He was my brother,
yet I did not know how to love him well.
Born two months before my 11th birthday,
he was a beautiful baby, and a fussy one.
Colic, they said. All I know is,
I spent many evenings walking around
our dining room in the dark,
gently singing into his ear while he wailed in pain.
This small person had two hernia surgeries
before he turned two, a harbinger of tough times ahead.
He was a different sort of little boy,
easy-going in some ways,
stiff and overwhelmed in others.
Terrified by sudden noise,
his own voice was often uncomfortably loud.
He was fidgety yet owned observational skills
that would occasionally astound us.
He saw details, lots and lots of details.
But he so often completely missed the big picture.
Sadly, he never did find it . . .
I am writing about one of the saddest pieces
of my own family story today,
my younger brother's hard, hard life.
