My brother is gone and I am slowly coming to terms how much of a baby I am.
    He’s not dead, he left early last Monday morning for Denver, Colo. where he joined a big group of other like-minded civil-servicers in the Americorps. He will be gone for 10 months, the longest time he has been away from his family, ever.
    I have left my family before, a few times. For a while they began to think of me as more of a seasonal visitor than a permanent resident – which is a good thing, a natural progression.
    I left home after high school for Vermont. I waved good-bye to my friends and my family and set my sights on the horizon.
    I admit, leaving them at first was very, very tough for me. I would sleep all day and wonder where all my friends where. I remember driving home nearly every weekend just to hang around and play my part in the same old nothing that my Limington crowd scintillated with. I was a refuge from the cold, unknown hills of Vermont, returning home to say “yes, this is much better.”
    But as time went on I began to grow more and more at home in my new surroundings. I got into the day to day independence, living on my own terms and the like, so much so that I came home and called less frequently.
    Over the phone my parents would say “Oh we miss you so much,” and the line would be passed from my dad to my mom to my brother to my friend Rory to my dog…
    And I would reply with much of the same nostalgic oozing. But, where at first it was honestly true, I started to find myself, how should I say it, assuming a fake longing.
    I missed them all, every friend and every corner of every road in Limington: I missed the southern accent of our local librarian, I missed the cheap cheeseburger meals at Jongerdon’s, I missed the rope swing on River Road, I missed the old Volvos in my backyard – I missed being young in Limington.
    But at the same time there was this new, shiny independence in Vermont and slowly, but surely, I grew to call that place my home. Cutting off my former life was no longer “easy” or “hard,” it just was.
    Then I left Vermont. I severed ties with my life there and returned home. The process of leaving and forgetting repeated itself.
    In both of these moves I was the one doing the leaving, I was the main character. But now, with the departure of my brother on Monday, I am coming to grips with what it means to be the one left.
    First there were questions. The usual thoughts were quick to jump on me; Why would he go so far away from us? What is it that he is getting away from? Will he like it more there and never come back? I looked to my parents for answers who in turn looked toward my brother who, over a cracking cell-phone line, muttered something like “I dunno.”
    Then there was reverie. We looked at old photos of Dylan as he grew up, a chubby faced golden-boy tackling dogs and slamming around in Autumn leaves. Pictures seemed to keep suggesting that he would never change. My mom cried against my father and I stared at the rug.
    Then I felt angry. Little brat. Does he think he is just so cool that he can just leave me here with his soda-guzzling friends and their unpredictable schedules and these dogs that apparently need constant, unchallenged attention? Who does he think he is? I felt short changed by his departure, but that soon gave way to an even more unwarranted reaction.
    I began to almost see him in every room. I started experiencing a weird sensation where it felt as though, if I were quick enough, I could catch him in the next room over. I was convinced, on some level, that he was just avoiding me – running mad around the house.
    Then, and to my point, a sadness settled like an awkward pause. We held our breath. He’s gone – the little dude is gone. We exhaled.
    Leaving, I was empowered by the odyssey at hand; left, I am the scorched launch pad to my brother’s moon rocket. My mom told me this was a taste of my own medicine and I agreed, albeit slightly annoyed by her terrible poignancy.
    When we are left, we go through these stages of perplexity, denial, anger and sadness. Everyone does, it is natural. What is unnatural is to think of your life as a rock when in fact it is the orange magma quickly spilling over the Earth.
    The vacuum left by the departed, whether they be dead or just gone away, haunts us by providing a constant reminder of how things were. I miss him more than I thought I would, but I feel this is the outfall of some larger scale finally being balanced – the leaver is now the one left – and that makes it easier for me to accept the change.
    — Stowell P. Watters