The Day That Didn’t Hurt

For over a year, I had the date marked in my work calendar: July 27th, 2025. I assumed it would be solemn. Quiet. Sacred.

On July 25th, I called Mom while curling my hair as part of my going out ritual. We talked about the usual things: my friends, how being 29 is fun and ridiculous in New York, how I feel more like myself than I have in a while.

She sounded groggy but glad to hear from me. Her health was improving, slowly, but she was still taking it easy.

We got to the part of our calls where we list the family like a roll call. Dad was in California. Carter and Stewart were setting up the nursery. The relatives in Indiana were still recovering from the Pacers' playoff loss. And then I said it casually, like I was mentioning the weather:

“On Sunday, I’ll be the same age Ike was when he died. Twenty-nine years, four months, and twenty-one days.”

She went quiet. “Mom?” She inhaled. Her voice caught. “That… gave me chills,” she said.

We paused. Exhaled. I imagine we were both staring at the same sea of memories, shouldering the weight of wanting things to be different. Then we moved on.

Back to Dad. Carter. The baby coming in August. How Mom has miraculously managed to dodge all grandmotherly duties thus far. We hung up. I went out for dinner. And Sunday came.

I’d watched the day inch closer, certain I’d wake to an anvil on my chest, or at least a lump in my throat. Something visceral and devastating that would pull me back to the rawness of early grief I felt when Ike first died six years ago.

Instead, I woke up at 1 p.m. to the clatter of my roommate, Julian, putting away dishes. We laughed about the night before, about the strangers we sang karaoke with, about how he insisted we order Cosmos like it was 2003. I admitted I poured mine out in the bathroom.

We swapped dinner ideas. He went to the store. I baked banana bread using a recipe I stole from my college boyfriend because the bananas were perfectly rotten. We lounged on the couch, drifting in and out of conversation, sharing memes, eating baby bells, gasping at the cat whenever he repositioned, and not moving much ourselves.

In the early evening, Sophia and Andrew came over. Julian cooked chicken ragù, and we tangled ourselves around the living room, eating. Everyone had Sunday hair. It felt like the best part of summer camp, when everyone still likes each other and no adults have shown up yet. I didn’t think about Ike.

I didn’t realize I hadn’t until Monday, when I saw the calendar reminder. I froze. Not because it hurt, but because it didn’t. Guilt rose where the grief should have been. And then the pull began.

What if forgetting to remember meant I was forgetting him? Sometimes the ache feels like the only proof he was real, the only souvenir I have left of how much I love him. And if that starts to fade, what else will? The grief shows up like a wound I don’t want to heal, because at least it reminds me he was here. That I was his little sister for 22 years. That I still am.

Is that how grief works? The days you brace for pass quietly, like a ship you thought might crash but just glides by. And then it sneaks up on a Monday at your desk and suddenly the loss is loud again and you need to put in eye drops before anyone notices tears have started to swell.

I’ve heard people say that grief is just love with nowhere to go. It’s a line that sounds true until it isn't. On Sunday, I wasn't without a place for it. I was surrounded.

Kevin texted me about the guy from the night before. Seher checked in. Bea called to catch up. Madie sent an invite to her tomato party. Sophia booked us blowouts for the wedding next month. Love was orbiting, as we all cared for each other in that unspoken way people do, through invitations and check-ins and recipes and pasta bowls and shared air.

Maybe that’s what dulls the edge of loss. Not time, but presence. Maybe the love finds somewhere to go after all. And maybe that’s enough to distract you…

But then I was back in the office, staring at my calendar. It didn't hit me in a way anyone would notice. I didn’t let the tears fall. I didn’t get quiet. I didn’t even sigh. I just stood up too fast, walked with a little too much purpose toward the office kitchen like I had a plan in mind, which I didn’t.

That’s how it usually starts: maybe I’m thirsty, maybe just tired, maybe I haven’t eaten. I always reach for something I can fix.

The kitchen was cold. It always is. The light in there makes people look older, or maybe just more tired.

I opened the fridge even though I already knew what was in it. I reached for the cheese sticks. Peel one. Eat it. Tell yourself it’s hunger. That it’s not what it actually is: a silent undertow that starts beneath your ribs and pulls downward, all the way down to wherever people go when they’re trying not to break.

It tasted like nothing. Not bad, just blank. My body had already decided it couldn’t be satisfied.

I stood there for a while, chewing. Looking at the paper towels like they might anchor me. Listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead and the low buzz of people laughing down the hall about something that didn’t matter. It made me angry, how casual it all was. How easy it seemed to be a person not remembering something they’d forgotten.

I don’t tell anyone. They mean well, but they look at you differently once they know. They say things like “I can’t imagine” or “You’re so strong,” and they mean it as comfort, but all I hear is: You are other now. You are changed. You are someone we hope we never have to become.

So, I perform normal. I say “Hey!” when I pass someone on the way back to my desk. I send a Slack with a smiley face wearing a cowboy hat. I finish the cheese stick and throw away the wrapper like I’ve accomplished something. I write sentences about completely meaningless things with a kind of obsessive precision, because it’s easier than thinking. It’s easier than feeling how heavy I am.

No one asks if I’m okay, and I’m glad. Because if they did, I might crack just a little. I might say, Actually, something’s broken in me and I’ve gotten so good at hiding it, I forget it’s there until it flares up in moments like this when I remember I forgot the day I turned exactly the age my older brother was when he choked to death.

But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything. I get through the hard day like I always do: by outlasting them.

And when I finally get home, I take off my shoes slowly. I sit on the floor, not because I need to, but because I don’t know what else to do with myself. I go upstairs and open a bag of chips I don’t want. Watch The O.C. because I’ve seen it before. I don’t cry. I don’t scream. I don’t unravel or let a tear fall. I just stop.

There’s a version of me that people believe in: a girl who has made peace with grief, who found meaning in the pain, who writes about it and comes out the other side. But the truth is, I still walk around with an ache that comes from a hollow space edged in glass. I’ve learned how to move through the world so it doesn’t cut me, but that’s not strength. That’s choreography. And some days, like today, I get the steps wrong.

Three episodes in, I text Georgia. Something short: Today is heavy. She knows exactly what I mean. I don’t need her to fix it. I just need someone who’s broken the same bone to nod and confirm it’s real. That I’m not imagining it or being dramatic and weak. That it’s okay it still hurts.

She says she gets it. That she had a day like that last week. That’s all I need: to be acknowledged. To be witnessed, nothing more. Then I go back to being busy doing nothing.

I order Thai food. I put away laundry. I water the plants on top of the fridge and the one in the bathroom I keep forgetting exists. I do all the things that prove I am still a person. Not because I feel like one, but because I have to. Because there is no other option. I’m still here. And somehow, now, I’m a day older than Ike ever got to be.

It’s cosmically out of order to stand in time he never reached. I am now one day older than my older brother, and no matter how far I go, he remains 29. That feels like theft. I am aging in his place, moving through a life that should have belonged to us both. My body grows older while his memory stays young. It is not just unfair, it is an unnatural betrayal. A trespass into time we were meant to share. Everything after his last age feels borrowed, like I am living on a timeline built for two and burning through it alone. Why am I the one still here?

It’s the question I never say out loud, because there is no answer. I am here. I don’t want to waste what he never got. I can’t. So I keep doing simple, stupid human things.

I pick up the cat toy and put it back on his bed. I remove the trash bag from the tiny can in the bathroom, tie it to the one from the kitchen, and take it all the way downstairs. I brush my teeth. I scroll. I answer texts.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up and it will feel lighter. The grief will be neatly packaged again, tucked into the back of my brain like the winter clothes under my bed. I’ll answer emails. Book a flight. Make plans I may or may not keep. I’ll feel a little better. Maybe even good.

And I’ll shove away the thought that by then I’ll be two days older than my brother ever got to be. That I ever forgot to feel him the day we were the same age he was when he died.

I’ll wake and make coffee. Sometimes remembering only starts when we forget.