Missing

Maybe I can place this missing here and it will cut less deeply, my soul will feel it less acutely.

We opened a huge box of gifts my brother and his wife shipped to us today and it inexplicably broke me. For all intents and purposes, I am a fully grown and mature human being. But I am not. I still miss everything and everyone and all the places I have loved to the very depths of my marrow. There are occasional reminders that we all live so terribly far from one another, that as we have grown, we have moved away and our lives have taken different trajectories.

The love is still there, but the physical presence is not. And these years will go so quickly. It is a reality that we may never live close again. That we may die thousands of miles from one another. That our relationship will consist of random text messages and boxes of gifts and letters sharing a fraction of our hearts in any given moment. This may be what is left for us and that is a heavy, heavy burden to consider.