You're glowing in the dark...

It is a dangerous thing with brothers, to think that you could be as strong as them, or as wise as them, or as good as them. To believe that you could have been the same person, if only you hadn’t gone a different way. To think that your parents raised you the same, and that your genes combined the same, and that the rest of what has happened in all your triumph ... or failure.

He wishes that he had some guarantees about the afterlife. He wishes he were absolutely certain that his grandparents are now together in some tranquil and restful place, sharing endless walks and talks beyond what their too-short stint on on this Earth allowed. He wishes he knew that they were offering enough comfort to one another to allow them both not to remember their distressing, even excruciating, last hours and days. Perhaps in this very moment they are peacefully making their way down the zigzag trail that joins the villages to the rest of the world below. And in his imagining, whenever they lose track of one another, one or the other calls out in a voice that echoes throughout the hills. Where are you? Right here, my love. Right here.