This year is the 25th anniversary of his death. Today would be his 27th birthday. My parents seldom speak of him and if I mention a birthday or anniversary, it's always met with silence and then, "Oh, you're right. I guess it is," like they didn't remember. I am often frustrated that the only two people who knew him as I did will not talk about him. The only story I have learned in recent years was how I would sleepwalk after he died, calling out for him. My sisters never knew him. To them he is only the brother they never knew.
When my son was born, we named him Sean Ethan after his uncle Jonathan. Spending time and playing him these past two years brings back so many memories. When he spent the night at Children's Mercy last Christmas, the same hospital his uncle lived most of his short life in, it was nerve-racking. I watched my mother that night, as I do every time she is with him, and I can tell she feels the same way I do. It is not that we love him more than the others, it's that he replaces something we both lost.
A friend recently posted a picture from Epcot and I remembered a family vacation there, it must have been '84 or '85. My sister Jewels was three or four. It was late evening and she was asleep in the stroller; the firework show was beginning. I could not wake her to watch it and I panicked. My parents did their best to reassure me she was only sleeping, but I was convinced otherwise. There was a similar experience with Janet years later in one of the Smithsonian museums, but I contained the anxiety. Perhaps this explains why before retiring each night I enter my kids rooms and nudge them just enough to make them stir.
*Oddly, as I began writing this post, my iPod, on shuffle, randomly played
