My Protanopic Life

Today I had a social meeting with a co-worker who lost his brother to cancer a few years ago. We talked about how you never really get over it, and getting over it is not something you want to do. You learn to live your life with this new hole that you try to fill with good memories. Every once in a while though, you'll be driving down the road or doing whatever, and out of nowhere it's like those good memories fall out of the hole and you suddenly feel that loss all over again. For me, the loss was like a ton of bricks on the word "dead". I was in my kitchen washing dishes. My mom called me and said "I have some bad news. Kit is dead." That word "dead" hit hard. And sometimes it comes back and hits me again, knocking all the good memories out of the hole. Sometimes I have to push that feeling aside because it's not an appropriate time, but other times I can sit with it for a while, letting my heart ring in the aftershocks, letting my eyes get watery. Then I pick up those good memories and put them back in the hole where my brother was.