6

It's been six years. Six years exactly from that morning that I woke up and my life was totally, irreversibly changed.

Strange as it is, my most vivid memory of that morning is of standing at the sink in the bathroom trying to put mascara on and being unable to do so because my hand was shaking so much. A silly detail to remember on a day like that, but it is what it is. That's the first picture in my mind when I think about that day, trembling, fear, dread, an unwillingness to hear the words spoken outloud. And with that one split-second image comes an overwhelming onslaught of emotion that really just blurs together everything that happened in the hours following that moment.

The police officers and counselor at the table with my parents, the looks on their faces, my dad's silence, my mom's only word "Bradley..." said in a way I will never forget, having to wake Kyle up and tell him. The phone calls, the loss for words, the dry feeling in my mouth for days and inability to eat. And despite the fact that she was in the middle of working at camp an hour and a half away, how Emily showed up what felt like immediately. More food, more visitors, more time moving so quickly you couldn't feel it and then moments that seemed to be frozen painfully in time. My dad's best friend Joe's face on the porch as he raced into the house straight from Wisconsin, a beautiful picture of friendship I'll never forget. Trying to sleep, trying to stay awake. Trying to understand, trying to pray, trying to stand up on my own two feet. Funeral arrangements, sorting through pictures, the seemingly endless stream of visitors and food that we were so thankful for as the quiet moments were the hardest then. Visitors bringing caramel macchiatos that never tasted so good and trying so hard to go through the motions. Watching my parents try to grasp what just happened. Minutes bleed into days and hours in what is both the longest and shortest week of my life. From that Sunday when we heard, through the processing and planning and sitting and making decisions to the endless hours standing and talking, center of attention at the wake, the funeral, giving the eulogy, the celebration afterward, the quiet days that followed. I remember every moment of all of it, that week is burned into my brain.

It's been six years since we lost Brad in a motorcyle accident. It's gotten easier in a lot of ways. Each year, it sort of gets easier. But the ways that I've been totally changed forever are still there. I still flinch on the freeway everytime a motorcycle passes me. Every time. I still strain and try to hear his voice in my mind. I still feel the weight of the loss of a brother when other people talk about theirs, or when I go to weddings or think about my childhood. I still feel the significance of losing him when I celebrate a birthday each year, thinking that his young life was cut so short. Here I am, on the edge of 25 and my big brother is frozen in time at 21. I still struggle with the answer to the question "how many brothers and sisters do you have?" Such an easy question for everyone else, one that is anchored in pain, sadness, sometimes anger for me.

I've learned so much in six years, and so much of that learning has been filtered through this lens. I've learned more about grace, about faith, about the goodness of God than I ever would have thought. I've lived in and experienced lament, something so central to the scriptures that I'd never quite grasped before. I've learned about hope, about letting go, and about clinging to scripture and also to the treasured memories and moments. I've lived in and through anxiety, in fear, in anger, in redemption, in peace. I miss my brother. And today, exactly six years later, I'm mourning the loss of what could have been. The man he could have become, the wedding with Lisa that could have been and the nieces and nephews I could have been holding this weekend. I'm always going to miss Brad, but on days like today, when the loss feels more real, he needs to be celebrated, too. He needs to be remembered and missed and held on to for the man that he was, the brother and friend and son that it was so unbearable to lose. Although, that part doesn't really get any easier. Six years.