20 Years Can Still Feel Like Yesterday

Some days are hard. There is just no way around it. Today is one of those days. 20 years ago on this day, my brother William was taken from this world. Taken from my family. Taken from a future that he will never live.He would be 40 and I often wonder what kind of man he would have become. Would he be married? Would he have children? Would he finally have found a passion and a path that would have provided a fulfilling life? Questions that will never be answered.They often talk about a loss still feeling like yesterday. I guess I know what they mean. The pain doesn't stop just because 7,305 days have passed. Yet, the pain is different. It is a hollow pain now. It's a dark cavern where questions swirl in whispers around my head. Questions of what he could have been and questions of what if still haunt me.I worry that I don't truly remember him. He's a frozen picture now, locked in time. He was just shy of 21 when he passed so he has been gone almost as long as he was here.Today I looked at pictures. He looked different to me in some of them. My memory has changed him. But I also found something new. In certain pictures, he looked just like my son. Sonny-Bunny is something of a doppelgänger to his father but there in pictures of  his (middle) name-sake, was my son. My boy who never met Will makes some of the same exact expressions. This both surprised and delighted me.I do believe in an afterlife. I do believe that one day I shall see him again and that wherever he is now is a good place. It still hurts to miss him, however... even after 20 years.