The Brother Heart, 19th Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Deneb): Next year, I'm going to have to change the name of the fifth day of Autumn in my New Revised Universal Calendar from Swept Into to The Brother Heart, and call this 19th day Swept Into instead.

The reason is the fifth day of Autumn is August 11 in the Julian calendar, which also happens to be my late brother's birthday. He passed away last year on the 39th day of Autumn (September 14, 2024) and I could rename that day Brother Heart, but frankly and not to be too blunt about it, I'd rather celebrate his life than his death. Also, the 39th day of Autumn is now titled Have Gone Out, which sounds like the extinguishing of a flame, which itself is a metaphor for nirvana, so it already has an appropriate name. 

Impermanence is swift. It's also inevitable. 

It's been quite the 18 months for impermanence. My cat, Izzy, died on December 12, 2023. My brother passed away on September 14, 2024. My mother left this world on January 16, 2025. I'm still here, cursed with having to witness others fall away around me. 

It's my brother's passing that still hits the hardest. Sure, I'm sad about Izzy, but a cat, however cherished, is still not a human. My Mom passed at age 91, living far longer than anyone expected, even her, and no one was surprised when she passed, even her. I'm not so sure I want to be around for that long. But David was my little brother, 10 years younger than me, and it upsets the natural order of things that he's gone and I'm still here. It doesn't seem right. He was 11 when I turned 21, 30 when I was 40, and so on. As Jens Lekman could have sang in Wedding in Finistère: 

Like a five-year-old watching the fifteen-year-olds shoplifting,
A ten-year-old watching the twenty-year-olds French kissing,
A fifteen-year-old watching the twenty-five-year-olds chain-smoking,
A twenty-year-old watching the thirty-year-olds vanishing.

Dude should still be with us.

Anyway, we're roughly halfway now between his birthday and his last day, and we come across The Brother Heart and I'm crying all over again.