Where the River Forgot My Name

Where the River Forgot My Name

When I was nine, the river stole my brother.

Not all at once—not with the drama of thunder, or rushing flood, or a search party with dogs and thermal drones.

No. It was slower than that.

Crueler, maybe.

It started on a summer morning thick with humidity and the scent of moss. He said he wanted to swim. I said I’d race him. We ran barefoot down the gravel trail, dodging roots and memories we didn’t know we were making.

The water wasn’t deep.

It wasn’t angry.

But it was ancient.

The kind of river that remembers things older than names.

He disappeared beneath the surface for just a moment.

A blink.

A hiccup in time.

When he came up, he was coughing, laughing. Hair plastered to his forehead, face shining with the sun.

But something had shifted.

His eyes didn’t find mine as quickly.

His smile hesitated—like it had to remember how.

That night, he didn’t eat much. Said he felt tired. Mom tucked him in and kissed his cheek.

The next morning, he asked me where his shoes were.

His shoes were on his feet.

The forgetting came in trickles.

A misplaced name. A birthday skipped. The wrong face on a family photo.

Then bigger things: how to tie a knot, how to whistle, the sound of our father’s guitar.

He forgot my middle name.

Then my first.

I tried to remind him.

I whispered it in the dark, carved it into tree bark, shouted it across the field where we used to play pretend pirates and argue about who got to be the captain.

But it never stayed.

The river had taken it.

And no one believed me.

The doctors called it trauma.

Said maybe he hit his head.

Said it wasn’t the river.

But I know better.

The river was different after that day. Colder.

Like it remembered him—but chose not to.

I kept visiting it.

Bringing pieces of us to its edge.

His old watch. A Lego we fought over.

Our paper boat with "BROTHERS FOREVER" scrawled in marker.

I watched it all float away.

The river swallowed every offering.

But it never gave anything back.

Years passed.

He grew taller. Smarter, in some ways.

But I was a stranger to him.

At school, teachers thought we were cousins.

He introduced me once as “the neighbor boy.”

I laughed.

Not because it was funny—

but because if I didn’t, I might scream.

I used to dream of pulling him from the water, still soaked but whole again.

Eyes bright with recognition.

He’d say, “You’re my brother.”

He’d say my name like it was a secret he’d kept safe in his chest.

But dreams are just memories trying to be alive again.

I stopped going to the river when I turned sixteen.

It stopped calling me by then.

Maybe it forgot me, too.

Last year, at a family gathering, he stood beside me.

We were watching old home videos.

There we were—muddy and wild, chasing frogs with our hands and destiny with our bare feet.

He pointed at the screen and asked,

“Is that your little brother?”

I didn’t answer right away.

I just stared at the version of us that existed before forgetting.

Before the water.

Before grief had a shape.

Finally, I said, “Yeah. That’s him.”

And I walked away before my voice could betray me.

People always ask how you lose someone.

They expect it to be dramatic. Sharp.

But sometimes you lose someone slowly.

Not with a bang, but a blur.

Like riverbanks eroding underfoot.

Like names washed away in the current.

You look up one day and they’re still standing there—

but the person you knew is downstream.

I still write his name sometimes.

In notebooks.

On fogged-up glass.

In the dirt beside the trail we used to run.

I wonder if he feels it, somehow.

If some part of him remembers me in dreams.

If the river still hums with the sound of our laughter tucked into its current.

The truth is, he didn’t die in that river.

But part of me did.

And sometimes, when I walk alone and the wind smells like wet stone and moss,

I wonder if the river forgot both our names.

Or if it’s just holding them

until we’re ready to be remembered again.

💬 Closing Thought:

Grief isn’t always loud.

Sometimes, it’s just the silence that follows someone forgetting who you are.

And sometimes, the river doesn’t take people.

It just takes the parts of them you loved most.