Sacrifice

I saw my siblings for the first time in four years this week. We spent three days at an encampment that would accommodate all of us and our families. It was a blast. On the first night out in the country, I did what I always do and went for a walk to see what critters I could see. The unspoken understanding was that my brothers would come along. We always do.

Back when it was just me and my first brother, Jeff, it was the same way. Some of my earliest memories are of the time we tried to catch snakes in Fort Worth setting a trap involving a cardboard box, a porch, gravity and a hope that snakes would go up a set of stairs; or the time we actually did catch some frogs at that same house.

Years later in Colorado, we were so involved playing on the swings down the street from our house that we failed to notice a tornado had gone past our town less than a mile away. In high school we went on a week-long hiking trip in the wilderness of Patagonia together, and had to spend one night in a shelter with a Kiwi couple who left all their food out so rats invaded.

In fact, I have almost no childhood memories that don’t involve Jeff. And even though our paths have diverged somewhat in adulthood, we followed the same career track and worked together regularly. Until four years ago that is. Seeing all my siblings now felt almost as though no time had passed since our last visit. But it has and it will and it is a huge sacrifice. Saying goodbye is so hard that we often fail to do so properly.

The worst part of it all is that I am not particularly good about telling people what or how I feel. And since I am the oldest and was absent from the family pretty early, I imagine they don’t know how much I love and miss them when I am gone. Maybe now they will have an inkling.