Divya Beeram

A Brother's Absence

Standing on the doorstep of my Indian Auntie’s home, the magnitude of my brother’s departure hits me at last, like an eighteen-wheeler hitting the freeway median. I feel tears spring to my eyes in a chorus of summer cicadas. I repeat to myself that my own life would not be uprooted, my mantra for the new school year. I am not the one moving. Not everything is changing. Yet, it is. One feeling emerges deep in my gut: regret – regret for the thousands of moments we have missed together, regret for the relationship I never thought to nurture. I sense my hopes of truly getting to know him dissipating, replacing themselves with a myriad of questions instead. How can I possibly know someone who is one thousand miles away? How can I understand his mind with a twenty-eight-hour drive separating my home from the hallowed gates of his new university? How can I bridge the gap that has always divided us? In this moment, this fraction of a second, I let questions fade into love as I embrace a final time with my brother. I do not let my bitter regret mar yet another tender moment with him. 

After my brother moved across the country to begin his college education, I was forced to reevaluate how our relationship had formed, and how it would continue to grow despite our history and distance.

My brother’s absence leaves a hole in my consciousness, leeching away any apathy left by the wall of adamant I had built between my emotions and his move-in day. I am staying at a family friend’s house while my parents help to move his things into his dorm. They have left on a Saturday outing, and I am alone. With nothing holding the tide of my emotions in a watertight dam, I am flooded. I do not fight against the current though. I marinate in the feeling, let it soak into my heart. I never considered my brother and me to be close siblings, but I wish I had. I wish I had tried more desperately to connect with him. All it would take is common ground, a shared interest or understanding, anything to thaw our icy indifference. More than anything, I long to rid the sadness from my soul. Often, I argue that sadness is acceptable when it comes from a place of productivity. This sadness though, is far from constructive. It leaves me wondering how I might have altered the past instead of initiating action in the present. If anyone ever told him, he would not believe them, but my brother’s distance imbued me with a new sense of melancholy. From my position on my Auntie’s couch, I stare northwards, wishing I could see past the hills and valleys, lakes and rivers, to him. 

My stint at my family friend’s house is quickly over, my parents returning from Connecticut with luggage emptied of my brother’s clothes. Life returns to normal, or an altered version of normal. Perhaps it is because my brother is no longer constantly pacing in the living room, or perhaps it is because my parents finally have time to themselves as partially empty nesters, but I find myself with much more time alone. I suppose this is what only children must experience, a life void of familiar sibling rivalry and incessant fatuous taunts. Although I pride myself on my ability to be sociable, at times some alone time can be exactly the reprieve I need. Loneliness, a sentiment often portrayed as melancholia, gives me solace. On the flip side of that same coin, I receive more direct attention from my parents. College admissions and graduation had skewed their observation toward my brother, leaving me to self-regulate for the most part. Without my brother occupying their full attention, they focus on me. It is not an unwelcome change, but it is one that can be intimidating in the face of new rules and regulations. On either side of the coin, solitary and attentive, it is clear that my brother has changed my experience at home. 

The distance between my brother and I leaves space to at last build a bridge between us. Hindered by proximity, we never had a chance to enjoy each other’s company, more often voicing querulous complaints about our mutual presence in a room. It seems there has always been a ravine between us. Now, I am given a reason to reach out and connect our lives. I send a text. A small act for most, this message serves as the first olive branch signifying a newfound friendship between him and me. I grew to understand the stories of those who explained that their siblings only grew closer to them after leaving for college. In fact, I think I may have my own story of similar themes. Texts and calls whizz from my bedroom to his dorm – a life update, a cheesy pun, a midnight revelation. His night owl tendencies and our time zone difference seem to combine in a harmony that gives way to a new era in our sibling relationship. A door is opened through our means of communication, and I am ushered over the threshold by my keyboard. At times, I wonder if I am cheating myself, if our bond is truly real when it was not created in person. I hope it is.  

As time wears on, I feel that I am forced to reevaluate the idea of my relationship with my brother. I ponder how the dynamic between us has shifted. What used to be the textbook definition of a sibling rivalry has since transformed into a fragile friendship. Even now, a school year away from his first day in college, I gingerly handle the words that can be used to describe our connection. For how does one erase a decade of malice and irritation? As children, we would fight for the attention of our parents, the role of the favorite child, and the most erudite comments. I would be angry that he had more knowledge than me, and he would be angry that I received the attention of a younger sibling. He had his older friends that I tried to impress, and I had my teeny-bopper friends that he would try not to insult. Such stark contrast is never conducive to a strong friendship. But, lines of contrast inevitably blur with age, and our differences are beginning to look eerily close to similarities. Our history can never be redacted from our narrative; it seeps into our family like the curling roots of a tree. Yet, it seems that new pages can be written and strikethroughs made. Roots entangle and strengthen each other, more often for the better. My understanding of my brother exists as a precarious balance between his child-self and the new adult he is now. Our bond too bears similar qualities, a patchwork of who we are and who we are becoming, shared experiences, and new interests. 

The effect of his departure is twofold: changes in my own life and changes in our interactions. I am growing into my new life and my new relationship with my brother. It takes time to reconcile all that has changed after he moved away, as it does with any nontrivial adjustment. However, I am coming to understand a new normal, one of solidarity and acceptance, late-night phone calls and inside jokes. Distance, a divider between worlds, makes space for the bridge now connecting my brother and me. Perhaps for many without hope of a close sibling bond, it simply takes determination and patience – the freeing of regret. It is a trek through the early years of cohabitation with one’s sibling to reach the unequaled bliss of perceiving them.