Ryan

This is not a funny story.

I miss you so much already.

Bridger cried for you for hours last night.  He remembers you taking us to Sea World.  He remembers you drying him with a towel after the big whale splashed him.

My little boy: you.  My first one.  I credit all I know about mothering boys to you, my tiptoed one, my quiet one.  From whom else would a girl among girls learn the secret languages of Transformers and Hobbits and  Masters of the Universe?

Astonishing, that you grew to be bigger than me.  That we waded into the Texas gulf as laughing children and emerged, shimmering and tall and sunburned, slick-stained with heartbreak and mortality.  That we outlived the fishes and kittens and puppies of our childhoods, and all the rest of us: you. 

You dreamed of clearer, bluer waters than our Gulf, more white sand than our sandbox could hold.   Do you see them now? 

I hope your heaven looks just like New Zealand, little brother.