He had been wrong.

I understood that now, sitting on the step beside my brother under all those stars.

Love does not vanish when people die.

It stays.

It stays in the habits they drilled into you and the soup recipe and the way you tell the truth.

It stays in the endurance of a grandmother who would spend the last of her strength writing twelve pages by hand rather than let her grandson walk alone.

It stays in the bond of a brother who would cross an entire ocean just to put his hands over your eyes and remind you that you were never, not for one single day, the island you thought you were.