My brother died, and suddenly everyone had a version of him.

Some remembered his contagious laugh. Others remembered his kindness, and some remembered things I didn’t even know occurred. They posted tributes. Got tattoos. Wrote captions that read like eulogies. Some of them knew him well. Others didn’t.

But now, suddenly, they carried his memory like a badge of honor. A performance. A grief parade.

Meanwhile, I was trying to breathe through the silence of missing him. Trying to grieve in real life while everyone else grieved online.

I started to wonder. Who gets to own someone’s memory? And what happens when the story being told doesn’t match the one you lived?

My brother was a great guy. He was all the things they posted about on social media. But he was so much more.
He was my big brother. The one who held my hand when I was scared as a kid. He stood up for me. He teased me endlessly. He was my biggest fan… and sometimes, my biggest pain in the ass.

But he was mine. Ours.

And sometimes, it feels like people who were barely in his orbit—or even those who were, but couldn’t possibly feel the magnitude of loss that I do—have stepped into center stage. Posting as if their grief is louder. As if their loss is greater. And maybe it’s not fair to compare. But it still hurts.

Suddenly, everyone was his best friend.

Suddenly, his friend’s children have become “nieces” and “nephews.”

Suddenly, they’re all posting images on Facebook about loss and suffering.

Suddenly, everyone is hearting those same posts and commenting as if they’ve lost a brother, too.

What about my parents, who lost their only son?
What about my children, the real niece and nephew, who lost a devoted uncle?
And what about me, the one who shared the same womb, the same childhood memories, the same inside jokes, the same blood?

What about the people who really knew him? The ones who sat at his bedside, who held his hand when the jokes stopped, when the fight got quiet, and when death finally came?

We don’t post about it every day.

We don’t need to.
Because our grief isn’t curated—it’s lived.

Maybe this is just what grief looks like now. Filtered through hashtags and heart emojis.
Maybe they need the world to see it.

I used to think that made their grief less real. But maybe it’s just different.

Still, I’ve learned that not all grief is loud. Sometimes, it’s quiet.

It’s folded laundry and an empty chair.
It’s holding your breath when his name comes up.
It’s whispering “I miss you” when no one’s around to hear it.

And sometimes I wonder if those same people who post their grief so publicly ever stop to wonder why I don’t. Do they think I’ve moved on? Do they assume I didn’t love him the way they say they did?

What does my silence say about me?

The truth is, I grieve in the quiet corners. In the spaces no one sees. Because I don’t need likes to prove I loved him.
I don’t need comments to feel the weight of his absence.

My brother died, and suddenly everyone had a version of him.

But I didn’t need a version.
I knew the way he laughed without looking.
I knew the stories behind his scars.
I knew him.

And while the world tries to hold onto pieces,
I carry a piece of him no one else ever will.

I carry the childhood version of him. The boy who shared a sofa bed with me in our parents’ living room, eating popcorn and trying to stay up late enough to watch SNL. Who stayed up whispering jokes into our yellow walkie-talkies long after we were supposed to be asleep. Who told me not to be scared during thunderstorms. Who dared me to eat weird snacks and then laughed until he cried when I did.

I carry the version who fought with me, protected me, teased me, and loved me long before there were wedding rings or Facebook tributes or final goodbyes.

That version doesn’t live on in a post. He lives in me.

And while the world grieves in captions and comments, I grieve in the quiet spaces he left behind. In the echoes only I can hear. In the memories only I can hold.

Because when the world lost him, I lost the one person who remembered everything exactly the way I do.

I lost the only other witness to our childhood, the one who could finish the sentence, fill in the blank, and
bring the past to life just by laughing at the same part I always do.

And that kind of loss doesn’t fade. It just quietly aches in all the places no one else can see.

So I hold on to those memories. Not to post them. Not to perform them. But because if I don’t, they die with him.

And sometimes, the hardest part of losing someone isn’t just that they’re gone— it’s realizing no one else will ever remember the parts of you they took with them.

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