I remember not understanding—

why they weren’t fixing him.
Why they weren’t reversing whatever had just happened.
Why they weren’t saving him.

They worked.

They performed CPR for an hour.

And I was right there—
screaming at him not to leave me.

Begging him.
Pleading with him.
Calling his name like somehow my voice could reach him
wherever he was slipping away to.

But somewhere deep inside me—

beneath the screaming,
the chaos,
and the denial—

I knew.

He was already gone.

It was as if I were floating somewhere above the room,
looking down on the horror below in stunned disbelief.

My brother—
my protector—
the one who had always been there—

was thirty-five years old.

And I could not save him.

No one could.

And that is the moment my life split in two.

Everything before him…

and everything after.

The world did not stop.

That felt like the first betrayal.

People kept moving.
Talking.
Working.
Living.

And I didn’t understand how that was possible.

How could everything still be functioning
when mine had just completely fallen apart?

I didn’t know how to breathe in a world where he no longer existed.

I didn’t know how to hold onto faith
when the outcome I had prayed for didn’t come.

I didn’t know how to reconcile a God I believed was good
with a reality that felt anything but.

But this is not just a story about loss.

This is a story about what happens after.

Because even in the ashes…

something was still growing.