On Sunday, January 8th, my brother, Nick, would have celebrated his 35th birthday. That's a crazy thought to me. Nick died when he was 22.
Nearly 13 years he's been gone.
In many ways, it becomes harder and harder to remember someone you've lost. But there are little pieces your brain holds onto.
I was part of a devotion the other day that was centered around tradition. What traditions define you? What traditions define your family?
There was a time in our family where every Sunday afternoon our tradition was going to an Italian restaurant after church. Capparelli's was its name - Nick affectionately called it Crapparelli's. It was a chance for us to be together, for my dad to decompress after preaching, and for my mom to not have to cook.
If memory serves me, Nick and I would always order the same dish... shrimp fettuccine alfredo. Every single time. It was the tradition within the tradition. It was way too much food, like 2.5 pounds of pasta.
And, frankly, the food was fine. Not great. San Antonio isn't exactly synonymous with world-class Italian food.
But I really loved those lunches.
Yet, as I think back to that time in life, I often wonder to myself, "Do I even like shrimp fettuccine alfredo?" Or was I just copying my older brother? Was I just trying to have something in common with him?
In all honesty, in the nearly 13 years since he's died I've never once ordered that dish at a restaurant. I'm not sure what that means.
That particular Capparelli's closed a number of years ago. It's been multiple restaurants since then. When I visit home, I'll often drive past where it used to be. It makes me sad that it's gone. Not because I would choose to eat there, but because as time goes on, the places where Nick used to be have started to disappear. And sometimes, it feels like parts of him disappear with those places.
So, the tradition of shrimp fettuccine alfredo at Capparelli's with Nick and the rest of my family is just a fond memory that lives in my head. Those memories are a little piece of Nick that I hold onto.
Sometimes a tradition is just the ritualistic replaying of a memory. It's the reliving of a moment in time from generation to generation. It's an attempt to keep something the same, even as everything around us changes.
A lot has changed since the last time my family went to Capparelli's. My family has changed. The world has changed.
Summer and I have a family of our own now, and we get to create and steward new traditions, new memories to share, to pass on, to relive.
I want to hold onto or relive some of the old, though. I want some of the traditions and the memories that I make with Summer and Josie to keep those little moments with Nick alive. I want to breathe new life into those memories.
Neither Summer nor Josie had the chance to know Nick. And I don't want to forget him.
I want my daughter to have some small piece of her uncle, something that she can know about him. I want her to have some small piece of Sam, too - Summer's brother. It wouldn't be right for her to grow up never knowing anything about either.
I am not who I am without them.
So maybe I'll take Josie and Summer to a mediocre Italian restaurant. And maybe I'll order the three of us shrimp fettuccine alfredo. Would that be weird? Maybe! But together we can give life to that old tradition; we can relive/reenact those memories, and keep that piece of Nick alive.