No, you DON'T understand. He's my brother. He was supposed to be my brother.

I find myself thinking about Jack a lot. Well, I wouldn't say a lot. But I do think about him now and then. I don't think anyone I speak to really understands how I feel. Sure, they can empathize; but they just can't ever really understand. I have these awesome friends, a few who have become like a sister to me. But it's just not the same. My whole life it's been just me. I never had someone to go through childhood with, someone who would have the same parents to grumble about, someone who had been there on all the family vacations and who fought with me.

Jack was my one chance to have a brother. Love him or hate him, close or distant, there was going to be that familial tie that could never be broken. No matter how I felt about him, he'd be my brother. I think I'd rather he be here, but someone I hated and wanted no contact with than the way things are. It's sad that I so want a sibling that I would wish for one I couldn't stand.

I miss him. I hear stories about the way he was - his pros and cons, his troublemaking, his sweetness. I see him in my head sometimes. I look at pictures and wonder - what would it have been like to actually have known him? There's a part of me that's so angry with him for taking away my only chance to hear "I love you, sis" and have the term actually be true. There's a part of me that is so angry with him for taking away my children's uncle. Their only chance for real cousins. But there's this part of me that is just broken hearted. A piece of my family is missing. How can I not grieve for my brother?

When we first started dating, Ben told me that Jack would have like me. That he wouldn't have liked his former girlfriend, which he'd known when he was dating her. But that Jack would have really like me. I think of that conversation and it breaks my heart. I hear about how the funeral hall that was bursting from those who loved him, and I wonder how he could have felt so alone. How could he have left all of us behind? All of us who love him?

No one understands, but I love him. He was my brother. I was made for Ben. From birth, Ben was my husband - it was who he was destined to be. Jack was destined to be my brother. And I love him because of that. I miss my brother. I miss my Jack. It hurts to stand at his grave, so overflowing with mementos and gifts of those still grieving for him. To look down at a name on a stone and know that I will never see his face. Never hear his voice.

People tell me I miss an imagination. That I can't really grieve for someone I never knew. But my heart is broken, and there are days when all I want to do is see my brother's face. To just once, hear his voice and know that my family isn't horribly broken.


My children will be blessed with aunts and uncles and cousins in those friends we hold dear. Familial ties extend beyond blood. But I so would have loved for them to have those family ties...