In the September after the three of you left for college, in one of the emails back and forth between Zach and I, I mentioned how I hadn't heard from you or from Michael for a while, how I was sad without all three of my big brothers and did he think they still cared about me? Did he still love me, too? This was his response:
"You of all people should know that I will always love you and care about you. The fact that you have to ask me makes me feel like I have failed as a brother. I love you more than you could ever imagine and think about you all the time boo boo. I miss having you here to put me in check. Don't worry... Sammy and Mikey still love you... they are just very busy. I'm extremely busy too, so I can see why they haven't been able to talk to you. I have not even talked to either one of them in about a week and a half.... but trust me, they love you, as do I."
Neither one of us realized then how much the three of y'all would morph into the three of us, how we may have thought y'all loved me then and I loved y'all then, but how that love would be tested and strengthened over the coming months and years ahead.
You're not only Zach's best friend, you're my big brother, too. And I'm the luckiest to call you my family.
Thank you for taking me to Boston. Thank you for loving Zach and Mikey like no other man friendship I’ve ever witnessed since. Thank you for showing me what friendship, loyalty and family look like when lived out loud, when experienced with a heart completely wide open, when fully poured into with more love and more wisdom and more grace than one ever knew before.
Thank you for teaching me how to drive a stick shift, though I’m not sure the lesson would still stand today. Thank you for helping me heal while I sat passenger in a little blue Z-4 as you sped it through the town I begged to leave and the one you chose to come back to, if only for me, all those weekends after weekends. Thank you for the music you chose, the songs listened to as a trio and the ones we chose as our own. Thank you for taking care of me first when we wrecked, for showing me that l really wasn’t ready to walk away from this thing called life, and for showing me every day since that it’s worth fighting for, that it’s worth introducing ourselves to our demons and becoming familiar with their characteristics, so that the hero’s inside of us know their place even more: front and center, right up close to our hearts, out and open and breathing and living in the world.
The way you truly wade through the forest and forge out the path that looks the most intriguing to you, the one with the most heart and adventure, the one that’s guaranteed to take more pruning and more forging and more dedication but will yield the results most desired, inspires me to always dig deeper, to listen for the way my soul perks up at the music that others may question the tune of. You’ve shown me how to truly live for and within yourself for the benefit of others.
I pray you always chase the moon, and I pray I’m always there chasing it beside you.
Thank you & I love you so so so so so much.