My Baby Brother

Only yesterday he was my
kid brother. Memory is tenderly
rife with versions of a teen-age
sister caring for an adorable
infant, my baby brother
who as a five-year-old obligingly
carried my marriage ring
to the chuppah. That all belongs
to another century, not one
but several earlier generations.
Now, as of this day, I am
bereft of my younger brother.
He remains, frozen in time,
in the past. Our brother-sister
role as of mother and child
is now a fable. No longer his
older old sister, he is gone,
departed, the story ended.