In spite of many obstacles, my brother is getting married in a few short days. As such, he has been moving his things to the house where he and his fiancé will live. It feels like my brother has always been around. He is seven years older than me, and I can almost count on one hand the number of years during my lifetime that we have not lived in the same house.
We weren’t what I would call “close” when we were growing up. Seven years is a BIG difference when you are a kid. But as I reached my teens and he, his twenties, we started to get closer to one another. We joke that we were raised on the same source material, so we have the same sort of sense of humor, and it annoys our dad to no end when we get going.
I think it’s really going to hit hard next week when he’s no longer around all the time.
And in thinking about all this, it strikes me how much our liturgical year and the scriptures assigned to it can speak to us in our day-to-day lives. Jesus has ascended into heaven. He left his disciples, but he did not leave them, or us, orphans. He sends the Holy Spirit to us to be our comforter, advocate, and guide. Just so, in my family’s current situation, my brother is not abandoning us. On the contrary, he is giving us a new family member for us to love and who loves us in return. (Having never had a sister, I am super excited!)
It will mean changes for all of us, as we adapt to new habits, for the better. It will be an adjustment to another aspect of our “new normal”. In that sense, maybe it is helpful that it is happening now, when we are, necessarily, making other adjustments to our lifestyle. Moving forward will be an adventure, and one that we will hopefully welcome with open arms.
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