forgetting to remember

My little brother has been gone over five years now. He's a constant but it's just a very strange thing, remembering and not remembering. I had lived two hours away for five or six years and would often go weeks or months without seeing him, sometimes that long without talking. Life's funny that way. Time simply passes. I'm having a difficult time remembering "special" times with him, about him. I've just forgotten things. And there just was not enough. A close friend once wrote a song - he's long since forgotten but I could play the entire song with every word correct, he thinks that's strange, but it was a great, great song - "undertow" - with the line "I'd feel better if I just forgot". I could think that about a number of things perhaps, or rather, might consider thinking that. But I wish I held tighter to the memories. Once they're gone, we've lost something and are lesser because of the absence. Remembering is often strange and secluded and lonely but it's necessary. Memories are the silent things that shape us and grow us. Five years gone.