The Grief Astronomer: Working on the Night Moves

“I woke last night to the sound of thunder / How far off I sat and wondered” ~ Bob Seger

My little brother died today. Or yesterday, maybe. I don’t know.
I echo The Stranger by Albert Camus because time stops and folds in grief.
And because for me, this will always be the day. Today. Yesterday, maybe. I don’t know.

I want to make this transcendent, stunning, so love-wrapped it carries you to another plane of existence.

But then, after hearing the news that my state’s poet laureate, Andrea Gibson, had died, I ran across this:

And I understood the assignment.

During the calling hours for my brother at the mortuary where he lay on the other side of the country, I was sitting on the couch in my suburban/urban home when my husband said, Oh my God.

Not the usual “oh my god”—this one brought me to my feet and to the front screen door to see two magnificent young elk in our yard. We’ve lived here fourteen years and this was not just a first—but an impossible sight.

I instantly knew.

“That’s Mark,” I said before I could think. “That’s my brother.”

My brother went elk hunting in Colorado, where we were both raised, most every fall of his life.

As I watched from the porch, one of the elk stood with head and chin lifted to the sky, as if to say I am free and wild and no longer hunted.

When people die, they say, the veil lifts.

These two elk walked through the veil and into my yard, and there are no words for this experience, though this is my attempt to find them.

I had been searching the mortuary's online presence in the days prior, looking for an obituary. It may help to know that the way I found out my little brother had died was through social media. After the elk had ambled down our neighborhood street, I googled again and there it was; his obituary had finally been posted:

To his children, he was a steady hand, a trusted guide, their biggest fan, and simply the best father. He lived fully and adventurously: elk hunting in the mountains of Colorado…

I gasped. I knew it was his love of the Rocky Mountains where we grew up that drove him to the woods and the strange comfort of a hunting camp every fall. It was how he knew to be a man in the company of other men. He, too, was born and raised in the same cult I was. He tried to love our father, though he was hardly fathered himself. His children profoundly loved him, and much of his fathering must have been grounded in the lack of what he received as a boy (though my brother may have felt differently). As the religious man he became, he took his duties seriously.

So, though I knew about the elk hunting, those lines in the obituary landed. The elk sighting was my brother from the other side. He had not responded to the care package I sent a year prior, but he was responding now.

I am a grateful grief astronomer, looking closely, trying to tell you what I see.

Bittersweet.

Yesterday, on my way to an appointment on the west side of town, I drove toward those Rocky Mountains my brother loved so much. I looked up at the peaks ahead and thought of him, thought toward him.

I had the music in the car turned up, as always, and the instant I looked toward the mountains and the sky, Are you there, Mark? Bob Seger’s Night Moves blasted on. 🎶🎵🎶

Over the years, whenever I called him, I’d say Hey, how are you? What have you been up to? And he’d say, Oh, not much. Just working and practicing. Working and practicing.”

If you missed Part One, you can read “Love Is Not a Victory March” here.’

Working and Practicing

My little brother died in June.

June will never be the same.

Grief came like two young elk in the city—

soft antlers, startled eyes—

the familiar shock of knowing

in the moment they turned.

The ways we missed each other.

The ways we didn’t.

Meeting again and for the first time

in his death.

Thank you for June.

For you.

These unbelievable images were taken in my front yard in Denver, Colorado the afternoon of July 9, 2025.

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On Repeat

Yes, I had a dream, I stood beneath an orange sky, with my brother, standing by, with my brother, standing by; I said “Brother, you know, you know it’s a long road we’ve been walking on. Brother, you know it is, you know it is, such a long road we’ve been walking on. Oh brother, and I had a dream…

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This above all: to thine own self be true.” —Hamlet

Kelly Thompson is the badass bard of to thine own self be true—naming what most of us can only whisper: There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was). With sharp truth, deep compassion, and zero tolerance for shame, she writes like a lighthouse for anyone ready to live from the inside out. If you’re done performing and ready to come home to yourself—this is your invitation. Come as you are. Stay as you are. ~

Dr. Bronce Rice

The Wellness Equation

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