My brother’s 50th birthday would have been July 23rd, if he had lived beyond 15.

My mom asked if there was something I could think of to do to honor the occasion. We weren’t together, but we did manage a video call with cake. My two kids, my brother’s niece and nibling, were there hugging me tight. My wife had made the cake without telling me, as thoughtful and emotionally intuitive as ever.

The kids were happy about the cake, but crying at the loss I’d gone through. My mind, though, keeps going back to what they missed in never meeting my brother. I was only 10 when he died, so I don’t know the kind of person he might have grown up to be. Which also means the possibilities are endless. Would he have been the childless gay uncle bringing back swag from the architecture conferences he attended every year in New York? Or the fun and crazy uncle who always had slightly too much to drink at family gatherings, but was otherwise harmless? Would his partner have been tender and caring towards my kids, even as they tended to their own, (Imagine; cousins on my side of the family!) or would they have been detached and aloof – still working out some attachment insecurity from their formative years?

And what about my brother himself? Would we have stayed friends if the tragedy of his death hadn’t ripped apart our family? Maybe we would have had a falling out sometime in our thirties. He and I would go on not speaking and not being the one to stop not speaking for months that became years until we had erased the groove of habit we had scored into our daily rhythms growing up, sharing everything with each other as naturally as if talking to ourselves in an empty room while folding the laundry.

Or maybe, if I can dream while imagining here, we would have been close, been travel companions, sounding boards, confidants, moral supports, wingmen, gaming buddies–drinking buddies!–or just fraternal friends.