Losing My Brother: Nine Months of Learning to Breathe Again

What My Little Brother Is Still Teaching Me

Nine months ago today, on January 26, 2026, my little brother left us.

His name is James. We call him Que. And I still say "is," because I haven't figured out the grammar of this yet, and honestly, I'm not in a rush to.

Que and me, 2018.

He called me T. And he called me Crud. That one was just between us. My brother had a nickname for everybody, but he and I had our own language, our own sense of humor, the kind of jokes nobody else in the room would get. He'd call me out of nowhere, no reason at all, just to check on me. He was kind. He was gentle. Always helpful, always in my corner. Que was one of my biggest cheerleaders. I didn't know how much I leaned on those random calls until they stopped coming.

A few days after he passed, I wrote this:

"I still do not know how to explain what that has done to my body."

Nine months later, I still don't. I've just stopped expecting myself to.

Grief moved in

Here's what I didn't know about grief before this year. I thought it would be a season. You go through it, you come out the other side, people bring food, and then one day you're "better." That's not what happened. Grief moved in. It has a key. Some days it sits quietly in the corner while I work. Some days it knocks me clean off my feet in the middle of a grocery store.

In February I wrote: "I do not feel strong. I feel cracked open. But I still have breath. And for today, that has to be enough."

That became my whole plan. Breath. Today. Enough.

I'm a builder. I've spent twenty-five years building businesses, programs, and brands for families and founders. When something breaks, I fix it. When something stalls, I push it. Grief doesn't respond to either one. So for the first time in a very long time, I stopped.

In March I wrote: "Losing my little brother has forced me to sit still in ways I haven't allowed myself to in years."

Sitting still is where the real lessons came.

The night my family told the truth

Forty-two days in, my family sat down and told each other the truth. We talked about the sleepless nights and the nightmares. About therapy. About the habits we were watching in ourselves: the one or two little glasses of wine, the one or two little shots, the things you reach for when you're grieving and just want to forget for a while. About what the future even looks like now. And we finally said it out loud. Every one of us had been struggling in secret. Nobody wanted to open their mouth, because it felt like your whole heart and soul would come pouring out, and you might make somebody else's pain worse. So we were all suffering in silence. Until that meeting. In that room, we found relief. I learned that a family can break and hold at the same time.

Who shows up

I learned who shows up. I made a list in February of the people who did, and I still read it. The casserole people. The "I'm outside" people. The ones who texted at 2 AM because they knew.

And I learned the question I'm still sitting with: "What does the next chapter look like when you stop running on momentum and start listening to your soul?"

I don't have the whole answer. I have pieces. I know I want to build things that outlast me, because I've seen what's left when someone you love is gone: what they built in people. Que built a lot in me.

So this is what nine months looks like. I'm working. I'm laughing again. I'm fifty and starting over in more ways than one. And I'm still grieving every single day. All of those are true at once. Nobody told me they could be.

If you're carrying a loss right now, here's the only advice I trust: you don't have to be strong today. You have to breathe. That has to be enough.

That is today's meditation.