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Alsyon’s brother died in a hiking accident in 1984

Dear Michael,

It's been almost 36 years since you died and I still miss you. Not every day or week, instead it’s

something that lives in me, the lack of you. I wish I could call you. I wish you could see how far

I've come. I wish I could have turned to you after Dad died and seen in your eyes, the spark of

recognition, that his passing was a relief. But maybe it wouldn't have been that way for you.

Maybe because you're gone I can choose all the ways you would have been and how you would

have been there for me, absolutely and without hesitation. Because, in life, you were always my

champion. You were on my team. A brother who looked at me and saw something good,

something worth loving. It felt so wrong when you died. When we got the call, late that August

night, we figured something had happened with David or Craig in Mexico, not you, never you.

You were the cautious one, the thoughtful one. The one I believed would always be there for

me. It felt unfair, unjust. Life was already so difficult, why this? Why now? David, at your funeral,

looking at all of us and saying, "It should have been me." And we said nothing because it felt

cruel and true.

We came together as a family, pretended to understand each other, for a short while after your

death and then scattered into pieces, never to be whole again. After you died, mom said we

should each try to think of one of your traits that we wanted to carry with us out into the world. I

chose your humor. I look back on it and feel I did take your humor and carry it with me. Our

ability to laugh about this mess. Our family. That humor helped me survive, to keep going. I see

your humor, our humor, in my sons. My oldest reminds me so much of you, that when I let

myself think about it knocks the air out of me. He's goofy. Hilarious. Brilliant, Unique. Like you.

And he gets to be himself. He doesn't have an older brother who bullies him cause he doesn't

play sports or he isn't tough enough or whatever nonsense our oldest brother invented to justify

his abuse of us. He gets to be himself. Every single day. And he's glorious. Just like you. In

giving him this gift, I hope and pray that somehow, somewhere I'm giving it to you, a lifetime

later. I hope you can see us. I hope you know that every time I laugh at one of his jokes, you're

laughing with me. You're here. You never really left. I love you, Michael, I always will

Alyson is a writer and lives in LA with her husband and children.