It happens a lot that while I meander through all the paths of my life—walk the dog, mess around in my workshop, hang out with the household, teach engineers how to communicate with each other—I'll think of something I don't know about Tim, and that maybe someday I could ask him. But he's gone, so that won't happen.
I wish Tim had found his way through. I wish we had my brother I rarely saw or talked to. I wish his kids had their dad around for their graduations and marriages and kids or whatever. I wish his students had their amazing teacher.
I think about Tim and the rest of my extended family of origin all the time, though I think they don't believe it. I've never really Done Family The Right Way for them, whatever that means in the moment.
All I know is that my heart is full of grief upon grief. A lifetime of loss and isolation, laid like a building, stone on stone. We can mourn things we never had; feel the lack, the voids that intuition tells us should be populated.
My extended family on both sides is remarkable. We have:
- Vast evidence for a biological component to intelligence. It's so bizarrely obvious, and it doesn't matter where any of us grew up, or what our childhoods were like (though mostly bad), or if we went to or finished college. There's even a handful at least as smart as me.
- The magisterial suffering of intergenerational trauma. It's tricky to speculate about where it started, when almost everyone is unable to remember their experiences (which isn't a good sign).
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