I have a favorite ball cap. It’s got a little partial rainbow on the front and says beneath the rainbow, “Good Vibes.”
My brother Jerome was hospitalized in early June. He had a lot going on medically, so the forecast for recovery was pretty grim. I would go to see him each day and learned quickly to not have any expectations: each day was different. Most of the time he was pretty out of it, I could talk to him but he couldn’t always respond. Sometimes when he did respond I could tell he wasn’t fully ‘with it.’
One Sunday afternoon I went into see him. I had snuck to the beach for a bit prior to, and I was wearing my favorite ball cap–both to have shielded me from the sun and to hide the hot mess my hair was from being in the Bay. Jerome was talking that day, not much, but some. I was sitting by his bedside and I realized he was staring at my hat.
“Good Vibes,” he said.
“Yea, Good Vibes, that’s what my hat says,” I responded.
Jerome had been struggling with movement, so it took me a bit to realize that he was trying to reach for my hat.
“Do you want my hat?” I asked.
“I want that hat,” he said.
“Why do you want my hat?” I questioned.
He said, “Because it says, ‘Good Vibes’.”
So I surrendered my vanity and placed my hat on Jerome’s head. I gotta say, it looked fantastic on him.
That whole visit that day was the best one he and I had while he was sick. I was about to leave and was halfway to the door when he told me he loved me. I grinned big and did a little dance back to his bed to kiss him goodbye again.
Earlier this week when I picked up an order ticket and saw that someone wanted me to write “Good Vibes” on a CookieText, everything about that day and that visit with Jerome came to mind. It was a nudge from the universe reminding me of the love between my brother and me.
I believe when people we love die their love doesn’t disappear, it’s still here with us:
in the form of Good Vibes…
