Dear Andrew,

 

It’s strange to be writing you.

I’ve talked to you in the past few years, I know, but seeing my words on paper instead of saying them in an emotional ramble to a dark sky is a difficult change. The only thing I can consider akin to it is playing music to a deaf person or jotting down a note to a blind one. You weren’t either of those. You had vision and hearing but not a brain to process them, to learn what anything meant. Did you understand the things we said around you and to you? Phil’s first word was “ball.” Mine was “down.” He the peaceful, quiet child; me, the demanding screamer.

 

And then you, Andrew. I don’t know if you had the mental capacity to understand anything going on around you, but part of me believes you could. Childish dreams of a little sister. Even though words never passed your lips song did; random, long, arching notes that only a young boy could reach, a joyous lullaby that was so identifiably you. The smile on your face put a smile on our parents’ faces. It hid the concern they had about you from your younger siblings. It kept us innocent a little longer.

 

One of the pictures of you in Mom and Dad’s room is from one summer we went to Florida to visit Uncle John. You’re in your wheelchair next to the fence that corralled the horses, a fence I got splinters crawling over to go help my relatives with their animals. A red and white bandana is knotted and tied around your neck, a shy smile below down cast eyes. If I look closer there’s a tiny bit of drool on the bandana and your eyes cross a little.

 

That bandana is now in a glass ball ornament we hang on the Christmas tree, one I always leave for Mom to put on the tree. It’s usually surrounded by smaller ornaments of silver dolphins, nose to tail in a circle. Mom looks at them, seeing you, seeing your entire life. I keep to myself, hanging back by the boxes and letting her have her private moment with you. She needed more of those before you died. She sleeps with another one of your bandanas folded under her pillow, so in the middle of the night she can touch it and remember her boy.

 

I remember being on a family outing, walking around an amusement park and eventually sitting on your wheelchair’s foot pedals when my legs got too tired. You reached forward and touched my hair; it was white-blond then and probably looked like the sun was reflecting at your knees. Sometimes I feel like I can still remember the feel of your gentle touch.

 

I know you’re still around. That sounds like a mix of me being a little crazy or a little too religious but I promise it’s not. You know how I feel about the place we were going to before you died, how the people at the church pretended you never existed so after you were gone Mom and Dad were left without the support they craved.  I think it helped when I had that dream. It’s been almost twenty years since I had it but it’s one of those things I’m never going to forget, you know? I took your existence for granted and I’m the one you came to in a dream only days after we buried you.

 

The first thing I saw was the water; kind of hard to miss all of it but it was purer than anything I had ever seen before. When we went to Bermuda a few years ago I could see the coral and the fish without even being in the water but yours was better than that. There wasn’t any coral, fish, or sand; just the white edge of the most beautiful pool I had ever seen, blue stretching into the horizon. And then I saw you. No wheelchair, no disease. You didn’t even have your withered legs. They were replaced by the bottom half of a dolphin’s body, silver blended with your pale skin at your waist. You leaped into the air, arms over your head in a childish dive. And your eyes- it was the only time I’d ever see them truly focused on something. I don’t know what you were looking at, what you were thinking, but I knew what you were feeling. It was like a gasp of air after holding your breath for almost too long. Even being a bodiless person watching you in a dream, I felt it too.

 

You went to swim meets with us, but I didn’t know you were watching as we slid through the water, learning for when you were free of your prison body. It was like you could to more than fly because you could swim.

 

Mom said she found me after that dream, wandering around the house, looking for you. I told her about what I saw and she had to remind me you were dead. I can’t even imagine how it was to hear such an incredible dream from a tiny girl with white-blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I was an angel living under her roof.

 

I was six and saw Mom and Dad clinging to each other that morning they found you. We were at the beach house we rented for a week every summer with Dad’s parents, sister, and her three children. I didn’t understand at the time, couldn’t comprehend the change my life was about to make. I learned quickly though, that when Mom is sitting in the rocking chair at the foot of Andrew’s bed, staring out the window, to not disturb her even if the leaves are finally falling and school is starting soon. I learned to amuse myself with the Barbies and hand-me-down action figures we had in our playroom, usually choosing Phil’s old toys over my own.

 

No one in our family would be as strong as we are if you hadn’t left us, as terrible as that sounds. I was so young when you died, only a few years into making memories that would last. I remember waking up that morning, Mom telling me you died. I remember the funeral, asking my best friend’s mom if her daughter was there because I wanted to play. I didn’t understand why everyone was being so boring with sullen faces and black clothes. Most of all I remember Mom sitting in that rocking chair in your room staring out the window.

 

I was quiet then. I didn’t understand death but I knew how it affected Mom and Dad. Even now, one of my greatest fears is being a bother to someone. I try to never burden someone with my problems. One night in college I walked on the beach late at night, wrapped up in a sweatshirt and too many thoughts. I started talking to you, to the bright stars hanging over the water, rambling about whatever was on my mind. I must have been there for almost an hour before I started to feel better. When I started walking back to my car I looked over the building of the nearby pier and saw a shooting star just over the roof. I stopped walking, skin prickling, and just stood there, watching where the white had streaked across the sky.

 

I bet you’re happy in heaven. You were happy down here, lying in the sun on the living room floor, settled into your nest of blankets with Mickey, our old dog and your best friend, sleeping behind your knees. Warm brown fur with a white belly and toes and a small white stripe between his eyes that went down to his nose, a marking I called a waterfall. He joined you in November of 2010.

 

I’m so jealous you get to have him. Is he still as gray and swollen as he was before he died? Or did Heaven take off the years of heart failure and make him into the puppy you knew? I have a picture of the two of you on my desk. You’re on your back sleeping and Mickey is right next to you, head touching yours, the one eye in the frame open from when Mom stood over you to take the picture. He’s lying on his back, legs in the air. He loved you so much.

 

Mom wrote me an email when he died. If she had done it on the phone I think we both would have started crying. Mickey died today.  Slipped away while I wasn't looking, just like his boy thrirteen years before him. I know in my heart that they run along the water's edge, delighted to be together again.  Mickey was seventeen.

 

Was your death as smooth as that, Andrew? An inhale, an exhale, and an exit? Mom and Dad never really told me what happened. We don’t talk about that stuff; it’s turned taboo in our house. I don’t want to hurt them more asking if the doctors had ever pinpointed what killed you. They told me in kid terms that you were handicapped and it wasn’t until I was eighteen that I read through some of my old medical files and found out you had cerebral palsy in addition to the seizures that rocked you several times a day. Did you have one last grand mal seizure, lying alone in bed that night? Did you just slip away? I’m not one for praying but I’ll pray that you weren’t scared. I’ll pray that you died similar to Mickey, knowing you were surrounded by family, safe as you could be. I’ll pray you were happy.

 

When I was twenty I designed a simple picture of black silhouettes: a boy running along the water line of the beach, a dog up ahead waiting for him to come play under the stars. “…they run along the water's edge, delighted to be together again.” They are a moment frozen, a snapshot of how I think you are. Free and happy, playing with your best friend, getting to be the child you never got to be. After I finished the design I got chills even though I was sitting in my warm room and I knew, just knew, that this was something amazing. A few weeks later that image was tattooed on my ribs.

 

I miss you.

Send Mom and Dad a happy dream, telling them you and the dog are okay.

For me, please?