For two years, I had watched Emma carry her brother’s absence like a responsibility. She thought remembering him meant holding on so tightly that she could never move forward.
That day, she had finally begun to understand something I was only just learning myself.
Love did not require us to remain in the place where we lost someone.
Sometimes, love meant finding a way to carry them into the life we still had.
A few weeks later, Emma began preparing for college.
She made lists of courses, researched scholarships, and talked excitedly about studying education. She even started teasing me about how often I checked whether she had eaten.
One afternoon, she came downstairs holding Felix’s old school folder.
“I found something else.”
My heart tightened.
“What is it?”
She opened the folder and pulled out a page covered in Felix’s handwriting.
It was a list he had made of things he wanted to do before graduation.
