Today, I took a quick walk down memory lane to here and here and here.  Which really was a bad idea, because then I cried.

Plain and simple-I miss my brother.  I miss his wife.  And I miss their family.

The three posts show us, happy, smiling, and all over three years younger.  Until this past week, that was the last time we had seen them.  They now live thousands of miles away–so many countries separating us.  Hours and hours of traveling between us.  Carter was five months old when they left.  And that seems like forever ago.

When someone is gone for that long, you miss them terribly at first.  And then gradually, the pain sort of becomes a dull ache that is ever present, but it just becomes how life is.  They aren’t there, and that’s life and we must get on with the show.

And then BAM, they come home.  And you find yourself four days after they return, randomly crying in the car because the sheer thought of them going away in a few months and leaving again for that long is so overwhelming that there are no words.   You forget how much you truly love them–even though that sounds kind of strange.

Also, this whole post is probably terribly weird coming from me as well–I’m not a very sappy, sentimental person, and I rarely am emotional.  But there it is, out there in the open.  While they are here, we will try to take in every moment possible–I just wish we were closer–and hour and a half away still feels like an eternity!