The Night Before Goodbye

(A reflection on loss, love, and the gift of life)

The night before my brother died, I wrote about how beautiful and fragile life is. I didn’t know it then, but my heart was writing me a message for the days that would follow.”

🌿 A reflection on loss, faith, and the quiet grace of continuing to choose joy.

On April 21, 2023, I wrote a piece that began, “Life is messy — oh, but God, it’s beautiful.” I didn’t know it then, but I was writing to my own soul. The very next morning, my brother David died.

That night before he left this world, I wrote about how fragile and miraculous life is — about how we should enjoy the joy, the pain, and every moment in between. Looking back, I can’t help but feel that something greater moved through me as I wrote those words — as if my heart somehow knew I’d need them to hold onto the next day.

It has taken me more than two years to truly accept his loss. Maybe because, at the time, I had already lost so much. I had survived cancer that invaded my pancreas, lost my pancreas, and became insulin-dependent. I had lost the man I thought I would spend my life with — briefly rekindled that love — and then lost him again in a slow-burn kind of heartbreak that shattered me.

I was grieving layer after layer of what once was: my health, my partnership, my sense of normalcy. And I think, somewhere deep inside, I saved one last grief for later — the one that felt too heavy to touch.

For a long time, I mourned for my parents — for the pain they carried after losing their son. But I didn’t let myself mourn for me — for the sister who lost her brother. Only recently have I allowed myself to feel that ache, to admit how deeply I miss him. And I do. I miss him every single day.

Yet, along with the ache, there’s gratitude. Because when I think of David, I think of his warm, knowing smile — the kind that reached his eyes — and his easy, generous laugh. He didn’t just smile; he winked and gave a little nod, often with that quick click of approval that was so uniquely him. There was always a touch of mischief in it, but never unkind — just David, full of charm and heart. He was fun, loving, and so full of life — even when life was hard.

Drugs stole too much from him, but they can’t erase who he was. They can’t take the memories or the love that lingers in the quiet moments — when I’m planning an adventure I know he would’ve loved, or when I catch a sunset so breathtaking that I just know he would have stopped to admire it too.

Sometimes I still think, what if I had been there that night? Maybe things would have been different. But I also know that life, in all its messy beauty, unfolds in ways we can’t always understand. That night, I wrote about the beauty of being alive. The next morning reminded me why I meant every word.

So today — and always — I honor him.

And the lesson his life, and his loss, continue to teach me:

Life is precious. Life is fragile. Life is a gift.

And I still choose to enjoy the joy,

enjoy the pain,

and most of all,

enjoy the gift of life — in all its forms. 🌿

Honey Note:

If you love someone who’s fighting addiction, keep loving them. Your love may not save them, but it will never be wasted. Love is never wasted.

And if they’re able to break free, let them be who they’ve worked so hard to become — the better version of themselves. Don’t hold their past against them. We all deserve the chance to live as the person we’ve become, not as the person we once were.

— Honey 🐝