On the night of November 9, 2026, I had a dream about my brother.
He passed away on June 13, 2021, in a car accident. At the time, I hadn't seen him in approximately two weeks. His passing was sudden, unexpected, and left me with something I would carry for years: the feeling that I never got to say goodbye.
For more than five years, that feeling lived somewhere deep inside me.
Over time, I began to change the way I thought about death. I started to consider that perhaps death wasn't the end of a relationship, but a transformation of it. I began speaking and thinking differently about my brother's passing. Rather than seeing him as someone who was simply gone, I came to believe that he had moved on, that his existence continued in some form, and that I would see him again when my own time came.
I began to believe that perhaps I hadn't been given the opportunity to say goodbye because goodbye was never what it was meant to be.
But believing something intellectually and truly experiencing it are two very different things.
For more than five years, I have been on an incredibly deep path of spiritual healing. A path that has required tremendous introspection, courage, surrender, and work. I've explored myself, my consciousness, my relationship with life and death, and the nature of existence. I've poured my heart and, in many ways, my entire soul into this journey.
I've hoped for a deeper resolution. I've worked toward it. I've wanted to reach a place where my understanding of my brother's passing wasn't simply something I could articulate, but something I could genuinely feel.
I think I had reached what I would call the first level of resolution.
Then came the dream.
In the days leading up to it, I had spent five days immersed in very deep breathwork and yoga. My consciousness felt expansive, and I was experiencing a particularly profound period of inner exploration.
That night, I found myself back in the experience of my brother's accident.
It had JUST taken place. I was crying hysterically when I learned of it. The grief was enormous. But then I saw him.
Or, more accurately, I saw what I felt was his soul.
It was his body, unmistakably him, but he was enormous. Giant. I was my normal size, standing beside his face as he lay down. His body was so large that my entire standing figure was next to only his face.
And yet, despite the extraordinary scale of it all, he looked exactly like himself.
He was awake but had a low gaze. Eyes not wide open. He was peaceful. He seemed completely at ease.
I was crying, but he wasn't.
He kissed me on the forehead.
He told me, or somehow communicated to me, that everything was going to be okay. I can't remember whether the words were spoken or whether I simply understood them. But I remember the reassurance.
There was also an understanding between us. A conclusion, perhaps, that we would see each other again in the afterlife, when my time eventually came.
I don't remember it feeling like I was learning something new.
It felt like recognizing something I had always known.
I felt as though his soul had come to meet me in this dream. I cannot prove that, and I don't need to. But that's how the experience felt to me. And I'm overwhelmingly grateful that he showed up for me in this way.
I even find myself wondering whether his soul needed that connection as much as mine did.
I don't know.
But I know what I experienced, and I know what it meant to me.
The dream continued.
Our family and many of our friends had gathered. There was an extraordinary operation taking place as we prepared to transport his enormous body. There were helicopters and multiple flying objects that resembled helicopters. We were going to airlift him into the ocean.
The ocean would be where I was to take him down, approximately 60 feet beneath the surface, and lay him to rest.
At the surface of the water, everyone had gathered. Family, friends, so many people who were part of his life and ours.
But when it came time to descend, it was just the two of us.
I was going to take his enormous soul body down to the ocean floor.
I remember that I needed to hold my breath to make the descent. He didn't. He seemed completely comfortable, completely at ease.
It was dark above the water, almost like a night dive.
I don't remember much of the actual descent. Perhaps the dream ended as we began going down, or shortly after we reached the bottom.
I don't know whether that place was meant to be a final resting place. In fact, I hesitate to think of it that way.
My understanding of the soul is that it never stops evolving. That it continues moving, transitioning, and experiencing existence in ways that we may not yet understand.
Perhaps this was simply a temporary resting place. A pause. A transition. Somewhere he could be for a while.
What stays with me is that everyone was there to accompany him to the water, but I was the only one who went down with him.
That felt right.
When I woke up, something felt different.
For years, I had intellectually accepted that my relationship with my brother had fundamentally changed. I had come to believe that he had moved on, that our connection continued, and that I would see him again.
But I don't think anything truly shifted at that deeper level until now.
I think I had reached Level 1 through my thinking, my beliefs, and my understanding of death.
This dream felt like Level 2.
Something had moved beyond the intellectual. Something had reached a deeper part of me.
I don't necessarily miss my brother any less. And I don't know whether the pain itself has changed. It's probably too soon to tell.
But I feel more gratitude.
A mentor once explained something to me about grief that has stayed with me.
It's not necessarily that the pain gets smaller. It's that our capacity grows bigger.
We expand.
Our hearts expand. Our tolerance expands. Our capacity to love expands. Our will to live expands. We become capable of holding more.
The grief itself may remain exactly the same size, but we are no longer the same size around it.
I've thought about that a lot, and I think I'm beginning to understand it in a different way.
Perhaps healing isn't about making the loss smaller. Perhaps it's about becoming big enough to carry it without allowing it to define the entirety of our existence.
I can miss my brother just as much as I always have. I can wish he were here. I can still feel the enormous sadness of losing him so suddenly and so young.
And I can also feel immense gratitude.
Gratitude for the time we had. Gratitude for the love we shared. Gratitude for the person he was. Gratitude for the life that continues to unfold in front of me.
And now, gratitude for this dream.
I don't want to pretend that I understand everything that happened.
I don't know why I saw him as a giant. I don't know why the ocean was our destination. I don't know why I had to hold my breath and he didn't. I don't know what happens to the soul after death, or what exists beyond the physical experience of being alive.
But I do know that I have spent more than five years working toward a deeper understanding of loss, love, death, and existence.
I've poured so much of myself into this journey. I've hoped for a deeper sense of resolution, perhaps without knowing exactly what that would look or feel like.
And then, in this dream, my brother appeared.
He was peaceful. He was himself. He kissed my forehead and reassured me.
I felt as though we recognized something that had always been true.
I carried the sadness of never having said goodbye for years. I'd come to believe that there was a reason I hadn't been given that opportunity.
I find myself returning to that thought now, with a different understanding.
Maybe it wasn't goodbye.
Our relationship didn't end. Maybe it simply changed into something I'm still learning to understand.
I still miss him. I always will.
But something has expanded inside me. Something feels more settled, more concrete, more deeply integrated.
And if there's one thing this experience has reminded me of, it's that love and grief are not opposing forces. They are deeply intertwined expressions of just how much someone can mean to us.
We don't necessarily heal by loving someone less, missing them less, or forgetting the pain of losing them.
I believe we heal by expanding our capacity to hold all of it.
The love. The loss. The longing. The gratitude. The unknown.
And perhaps, sometimes, we are given experiences that remind us that there is still so much we don't know.
I don't know what happens after this life.
But I know what I felt.
I know the peace I woke up with.
And I know that, for the first time in more than five years, something deep inside me feels a little less broken.
I didn't get to say goodbye.
After all this time, I'm beginning to understand why.
It was never goodbye.
