If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know that my family has been through the wringer over the past four and a half years. My father died in May 2014, then my sister in June 2016, then my brother in September 2017. All from cancer, all horrible. (Although I don’t think there’s a non-horrible way to die from cancer.) Their deaths have each changed me in different ways, and I’m not the same person I was in February 2014 (my dad was diagnosed at the beginning of March). The picture on the right is one of my favorite of the three of them.

Last June, I shared a post about my sister, Lessons From My Sister, on the First Anniversary of Her Death, so as my brother’s anniversary has approached (it was yesterday), I’ve thought a lot about what I should say. Brian and I were never close. We were step-siblings until his dad adopted me when I was 9, and he always lived with his mother, not us. (Until one summer when I was home from college and I learned it was probably for the best we never truly lived under the same roof. Ugh, brothers, lol.) He was six years older than me, and like my sister, came out of his parents’ divorce differently than I did mine. I was an infant; they were 11 and 12. That’s not to say we didn’t get along or that he didn’t play the protective older brother role when needed—we just weren’t close.

He was a chef, loved (and hated) the Detroit Lions, and had an affinity for cheesy reality TV. When I moved from Chicago to Mexico with my (then) husband in 2007, Brian subleased my apartment and ended staying there ten years, until a couple months before his death. I think I spent more time with him in that apartment—a strange combination of furniture from my past and his belongings—talking about life and sports and family, than I did all through my 20s. He had his struggles, never married, and didn’t have children, but he seemed content with his life.

I’ve felt guilty that his death hasn’t impacted me the same way my father’s did, or my sister’s. But I can’t pretend that our relationship was something it wasn’t. For example, my husband didn’t meet my brother until almost a year after we were married (Brian couldn’t come to the wedding because of work), and he often joked that I didn’t really have a brother. When they did finally meet, he teased that I just hired someone to pretend to be my brother. (Our relationship is weird.)

Brian was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer six weeks before my sister died, and at the time we thought he’d pass before her. But he somehow fought for a year and a half. I don’t know how I would have behaved if my dad and sister hadn’t already died, but I called and texted him more in that last year than I ever had in my life. He lived alone, and my biggest fear was that he’d die alone in his apartment and no one would know for days. When he finally agreed to move back to Michigan and live with his mom, the first of many weights lifted. When Hospice came in, it lifted a little more. When my brother-in-law called me that Saturday morning last year to tell me Brian died, I felt like after four and a half years, I could finally breathe.

No one was suffering anymore.

(Let’s not get into how my fear that something will happen to my mom or husband has completely elevated…)

Living in this space after has been strange. After 37 years, it’s just me and my mom again. When strangers ask if I have siblings, I never know exactly what to say. If I don’t feel like dumping my saga on them, I pretend Deb and Brian are still alive, but then it becomes a jumble of present and past verbs because I don’t like lying. Am I an only child again? This is the hardest thing for me to grasp. I don’t feel like I am, so I don’t say that, but the question still lingers.

I do need to share a very important thing: through all this, my husband Jeremy has been a ROCK. He couldn’t have imagined what would happen a year after we were married, but he’s never faltered. If I’m having a bad day, he holds me while I cry. When I make horrible jokes about all my family members dying (because that’s what I do), he laughs with me. And best of all, he’s shared his family with me. Because while I may feel like an only child at times, I have six amazing siblings-in-law who make it impossible to ever feel down. His mother has supported me in a way I’m sure she never anticipated. And his dad, step-dad, and step-mom help fill the hole left by my own father.

So getting back to the title of this post. I decided that the best way to honor my brother is to publish my next book on his birthday. I knew I wanted it to come out in late October or early November, and he was born October 26. It feels right, and it’s a gesture that I think he would appreciate.

And as a bonus, whenever I see my book online, I’ll see his birth date, think of him, and smile.