A Half Goodbye

It’s absurd how much we love each other. Sisters and brothers are sometimes friends but best friends? We’re a bit abnormal.
So tonight I readied myself like a soldier and stood my ground as the inevitable pain that comes from saying goodbye sunk in.
He’s not dying, I keep reminding myself, just moving away. Ben has to do this; I want him to do this. The time has come to put his plans in action.
He was always the one with the plans when we were little. He’d picture forts he wanted my help building, he saw trees he wanted me to attempt to climb with him and adventures his imagination saved just for the two of us. In return I made him an endless supply of mud pies, let him play with my dolls and even tried climbing a few trees.
Of course sometimes we fight like we don’t remember, forgetting briefly how close we really are. We’ve shared enough backyard forts and too many secrets not to know all of each other’s buttons. But somehow at the end of bad days we still managed to be friends.
Now today he’s taking the first step because Ben’s not just a dreamer, he always has to try things at least once. I’ve watched from below the tree as he climbed higher than I could sometimes take, “Don’t fall and hurt yourself,” I’ve muttered more than once. Now as he dreams and makes plans I see the same gleam in his eyes as when he’d climb our big cotton woods only this time I want him to make it to the top.
My brother is not dying-I’m sorry I have to keep saying this to myself. He’s not dying but something is. Our childhood: the little girl who made the pies and the boy who pretended to eat them are fading away and changing into something new.
“All good things come to an end,” right? Somehow this saying seems to have become another fixed law in the universe like gravity: All good things must come to an end. Or maybe it’s more just the simple human fact that nothing lasts forever. Like seasons we change. Often against our will we metamorphosize, daily becoming the persons God planned for us to be.
My brother is going to make the world a better place. I know this because I know him and he is definitely worth knowing. He’s my own personal star.
For twenty years we have been making the very best of memories and because he’s not dead we plan to make many more.
This might be the end of our beginning but it’s also the beginning of something new and I am confident that whatever God has up His sleeve it's going to bewonderful and I will someday fill many more diary pages with happy days gone by.
In truth this is only a half goodbye.
E.