I have tears in my eyes as I write this. It’s September 16th, a date that has no significance for me whatsoever. Except that it does. For the most unaccountable reason, I suddenly missed my brother. Perhaps it has to do with reading this fascinating book by Sue Minns called Soulmates. In that, she rips apart the cliched romantic ideal of a soulmate as your ‘partner,’ and shows us that soulmates are anyone with who we have an intense connection in life. And it need not even be roses. Rather these soulmates are like iron nail beds – they exist to hammer our souls into the shape it seeks.
I am a believer in the energy that people leave behind. I am in the process of clearing out no-longer-needed gifts, souvenirs etc from people who no longer are in my life, it is a symbolic process of clearing out the trash we surround ourselves with in our life. And I was thinking how I wished I have something like my brother’s shirt, to breathe in his energy. I have nothing. Nothing except one small paper with his handwriting. And I thought of a time when I was less than 10 years old. I had had the entire box of coconut sweets that my Mom had made. My brother came in and asked for those very sweets, it was obviously over, and a fight ensued between him and my Mom.
My Mom, in frustration and exasperation, ended up hitting me for eating all of it. And somehow, this is so crystal clear. I remember the salty taste of tears, the strong biceps of my brother, the sting on my back from my Mom’s beatings. My brother rescued me from my Mom’s hands, drew me to him, and gave all the protectivness that only a brother can. I still remember trembling against his shirt, resting against the strong muscles of his chest, frightened…yet secure. Today, I wished I can do that again. Somehow, I feel he would do the same. He was after all one of my soulmates.
