Sundays Are Not Always Holy

Some Sundays hum with peace. Others hum with memory.

This one? It hums with him

2020 wrecked me. And strangely, it also realigned me.

Not because of COVID. Although let’s be real, who didn’t have a rough year because of COVID? Restaurants shut down. Cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco were silent. Freeways were empty. You had Wall Street in New York and Montgomery Street in San Francisco sitting there, haunted and still. That kind of silence doesn’t happen often. Maybe once every few hundred years. It felt like the world stopped breathing.

But for me, 2020 was bad because my youngest brother died.

He was just shy of turning 41.

My mom called and said, “Your brother died.”

“What do you mean he died? What happened?”

It felt like getting hit with a brick. Not physically, but emotionally. I never thought he’d go before me. In my mind, he would always be here. I had made him promises I didn’t get a chance to keep. So the grief wasn’t just sadness. I was also disappointed in myself. That part still lingers, five years later.

The last time I saw him in person must’ve been nine years ago. The next time I saw him, he was in a coffin.

He looked peaceful. That was new. I’d never seen him that relaxed in life. And I felt something weird in that. Like why does it take death to finally be at peace? Why did he have to go through so much just to finally look calm?

How many of us are like that? Chasing something while we’re alive, while getting more and more stressed out? Then we die, and suddenly we’re still, relaxed, with nothing left. That part messes with me.

It’s a paradox I still think about.

We’re told to go get more, go win more, go prove ourselves. But what if we’re burning through our own wonder while doing it?

I’m a mother of three, married 25 years. I work. I build. I chase things — like a lot of moms.

When I was renting, I dreamed of owning a house. Then I got a house. Then I wanted a bigger one. In a better neighborhood. And once I got that, I still wanted more.

Looking back, it was always more material things. I thought that was how you became happy. But I was more stressed than ever. I picked fights with people I loved because I felt like they weren’t keeping up. My brother was like that too. We were both caught in the race.

We didn’t know we were running toward a wall.

When they closed the cover of his coffin, something hit me hard.

The only thing that went with him into the cremation chamber was his body and his surrender.

Years earlier, he told me he was going to be rich from Bitcoin. I told him, “Yeah, I don’t know how rich you’re gonna be, but you’re definitely burning money on electricity.” We laughed about it.

He was private. He didn’t share much with the family. When he passed, no one knew what he had. No one knew where his money was, or even how to access it. So whatever he had?

Gone before it was ever found.

Every Sunday, when life calms down, I think about him.

I think about the life he lived, the things we said we’d do, the promises we didn’t get around to.

I hope maybe we’ll get to do it all in another life. Or the one after that.

Since his passing, I’ve become more anchored. As a mom. A wife. A daughter. A boss.

I still go to church every Sunday. But mixed into that holy routine is grief and reflection.

These days, I don’t crave material wins. I crave quiet ones.

That Sunday, and every Sunday since, I stopped chasing the next house, the next client, the next thing.

I still work. I still want things. But I don’t want them more than peace. I don’t want them at the cost of being present.

That’s the win.

Not bigger. Not richer. Just clearer.

And if I hadn’t lost him, I don’t know if I would’ve ever stopped running