Brother Aaron, there are a million things I want to tell you on this day — your 70th birthday.

But more than anything, I just wish you were here with me.

You were taken from us 55 years ago, when you were 15 years old. Georgia will be 15 in a month.

By the time I was 15, you had already been gone for 10 years. When I reached that age, our family was in chaos and I was lost and without direction. The kids and grownups around me seemed to be encouraging me to join their adult world of drugs and sex — without love.

I wish you had been there with me to guide me.

But then I realize that you were with me then just as you are here with me now. You remind me that no matter what happens, I will somehow find my way, just as I did back then and just as I am finding my way now that our family is irreparably fractured by thoughtlessness and greed for power, status, and money. You remind me that my children won’t be subject to the generational traumas that broke our family apart. You escaped them by your circumstance. I have escaped them through my belief in love — the same love that will always bind me to you. Even in your absence, you have always shown me that love, even when I was too blind to see it. It’s what has always made whole in troubled times.

Brother Aaron, I visited your grave the weekend after the anniversary of mom’s death. I’ve been there many times. But this time was different. Now it feels like it’s just you and me. Even dad is gone now. You never had the chance to grow up and be there person you wanted to become. But you will always be the loving big brother who looked out for me — in life and in death. You will always be part of me.

Happy birthday. I love you and will always say your name. And so will my children.