I Stopped Judging My Brother When He Came Home In A USPS Box.
It was a cold January morning. The grey skies outside matched the heavy gloominess I felt inside. From the corner of my eye, I caught the USPS truck slide right by the kitchen window. My heartbeat quickened and I raced out.
I accepted the 14" x 10" box from the mailman and signed for it. I gauged it’s weight, 10–15 lbs of substance that once was my brother. A whole life of moments and memories now whittled down to a bag of ashes in this little box.
My brother was 6 years older than me and it’s sad to say that I don’t even have a single childhood memory of us ever playing together. I don’t know if it was because he was a boy and I was a girl or the age difference, but our childhoods were like two ships passing each other at sea.
As we grew, distance further separated us. We grew up on 2 different continents to pursue higher studies. He was away in boarding school and then later at college. It was the pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-everything era. We kept in touch through real letters and very rare phone calls.
It would be a long 7 years before we would meet again. His annoying little sister was now a grown married woman. We met as strangers, each unaware of the painful and pivotal moments that had shaped the other during those missed years.
