My Brother was a Big Baseball Fan
It was Major League Baseball season during the last months of his life.
We watched a lot of games that year — knowing that we were watching our last season together.
When I watched baseball with my brother, we could forget everything for awhile and just be. Brother and sister.
Something about the sights and sounds of our favorite game connected us in a special way. After my brother died, I couldn’t watch baseball anymore. It hurt too much.
The sounds of the game — only echoed my grief. Echoes reminding me of everything that I’d lost.
My protector. My own special hero. Having each other’s back in ways only siblings can. Laughing together until our faces hurt.
My big brother stopping to wait for me as he ran on ahead. Always ahead of me in every way — looking back for his little sister. A little sister trying to catch up to her brother.
One last glimpse — as he ran on ahead.
This is what siblings mean for each other in life — and when separated by death, childhood memories get lost in a fog of grief.
Swallowed in a mist. As though they never happened. Our shared world of childhood memories, I feared were forever lost.
It took a long time for me to come to terms with the loss of my brother. I’ll always miss him and that hurts deeply. In facing my grief, by taking the time to better understand all that he meant to me in life and grieving all that was lost, I began finding my way through the fog.
I began to recover childhood memories buried beneath the pain that had blurred his memory. Memories of a shared childhood.
Now when I put baseball on, I enjoy our favorite game again. I feel that special connection to my brother. The memories of our time together. The treasure of childhood. The gift of growing up with my big brother.
All that he gave me that’s with me every day of my life. When I miss him most, I remember. I remember his oversized smile, his hazel eyes dancing, freckles splashed across his face.
Memories come alive in my heart and shimmer like treasure in my mind’s eye.
Sometimes I’ll put a game on, it doesn’t matter who’s playing, I let the sound fill my home. Now, those sounds echo memories of my brother. The love surrounds me.
Memories that I feared lost, I have found.
Thank you for taking the time to read. Sibling loss is its own unique kind of loss. When you lose your sibling, your life changes forever. Someone who was an interwoven part of who you are — for most if not all of your life — is gone.
That loss can feel like the tapestry of your childhood pulled apart. In many ways, it has. As I write about grief, I write a lot about my brother. Love you forever, bro.
©Misty Fields, all rights reserved.
