Dear MJ

Dear MJ,

I hope one day you come across this letter and it brings a smile to the face that you have passed down to your nephew. I hope that sometimes when I cross your mind, you smile and are proud of what has come to pass. I want you to know that I understand and I am proud of you for walking away and choosing your own peace over all others. To me you will always be the keeper of the trains and the little brother who ran into our room at night.

I know that there have been many stories told over many different timelines but I will never know how it felt for you to finally be old enough to realize what was going on and having your mother and your sisters walk out the door. There are many different sides to every story, tracks that go in every direction like the trains you would lay out around the entire house.

Your father was painted as the villain in so many stories but he was more than any one thing. He was the man who took two little girls into his home and raised them as his own. I remember vividly the first time my biological father ever reached out to me and your father sat down next to me with tears in his eyes begging me not to forget the last eight years. I never forgot anything that he did for me. When he was sober, he never missed a dance recital, made me tomato rice soup when I was sick, created games for us to pass the time. He drank to forget so many things that he had been through himself, losing the one real father that he had, dealing with our mother and sometimes simply trying to make it through the day. He had anger inside but the truth is that we all do.

I remember the day that he found out you were a boy and I do not think I ever remember seeing him more happy. Finally he had someone that would cheer as loud as him at monster truck rallies, play on the Nintendo 64 and build fires when camping. He never treated us as less than you even though you were his own blood. Mom was different. She put pressure on you as the glue that connected the family lines. She used your grandmother converting you to a guilt trip that acted as the ink to sign the checks.

To me you were simply my little brother. You were the boy in the next room that had a new obsession every week. You like trains and then cars and then videogames. The house would explode around you and you would sit at the table eating ramen with a half pack of seasoning. Me and Britt would escape with Grandma from the yelling and you would stay behind trying to make sure that mom and the man were ok.

You spent a lifetime sleeping next to us in our rooms and looking back I think it was always more for us than for you. You worked so hard to be the child who did nothing wrong, was there for everyone and then you had to watch everyone leave. You always knew the truth before anyone ever told you and I cannot even imagine your heartbreak when Mom lied straight to your face about where she was that weekend.

You could have retreated, everyone would have understood. You could have been angry and attacked everyone around you but you never did. Even when you got sick and had to go through chemo you stayed stronger than anyone I have ever met.

Heroes can be two people. They can selflessly act outside of themselves for others or they can choose themselves in order to rise above. You have been both. The last time that we spoke was almost 14 years ago. I can still see you sitting in the chair upstairs the last time that you smiled at me.

Now you are in college for social work, yet again choosing a profession where you give more of yourself to others than you give to yourself. I hope you know in the back of your mind that I am proud of you. Even from the outside I am thinking of you always.

From your big sister,

Brooke