Hey Big Bubba

T.W. mentions of suicide and heavy with mental health and grief.

Hey Big Bubba,

I still hear your footsteps on the moonlit floor. Not loud, not sharp—just a soft shuffle, the kind you used to make when you were trying not to wake anyone, even though your laugh would give you away every time. Sometimes I catch that sound late at night when I’m sitting up thinking of you, and I wait, just for a second, to see if it’s really you walking through the door. My chest lifts like I’m holding my breath without meaning to. But it’s just the wind, or maybe the walls settling.

Even now, your laughter seems to chase shadows through the door, like it’s playing tag with the dark. You always had a way of turning the scary into something lighthearted, something laughable. I used to think you weren’t afraid of anything. Not the monsters in the closet, not the future, not the weight of the world pressing down on your back. I guess that’s the danger of looking up to someone. You miss the parts they hide behind the smiles.

Sometimes, when the breeze hums through the open windows—soft and unseen—I swear it’s you. I don’t mean in a metaphorical, poetic way. I mean really you. Like you figured out how to become the wind. Like you come back now and then to check in, to brush your fingers over the pictures I keep framed, or to sit on the edge of my bed when the nightmares won’t let me sleep. Maybe that sounds silly, but it brings me comfort to believe it. It helps with the silence you left behind.

And Big Bubba, the silence… it glows. Not gently. Not clean. It’s the kind of silence that hums like it’s trying to tell me something I can’t quite hear. A silence made of everything we didn’t get to say, everything you couldn’t find words for. Sometimes I wonder if it was just too hard to speak them aloud. Or if you thought protecting me meant pretending everything was fine.

The world was heavy for you, wasn’t it? Like carrying a sky full of broken stars in your chest. I think about how you walked around with a galaxy inside you, beautiful and sharp and burning at the edges. I didn’t know how heavy that could feel. I didn’t understand that stars, even broken ones, still hurt when they press against your ribs, trying to get out.

You still smiled, though. You still laughed and made dumb jokes. You still flicked my ear and ruffled my hair like you always had. You taught me how to tie my shoes, how to swing a cricket bat, how to skip rocks across the lake even though I kept flinging them straight into the mud. You showed me how to face the wind even when I could see it knocking the breath out of you.

You stood tall, Big Bubba. Like a tree in the middle of a storm. Your branches shook. I remember that now. I just didn’t know what it meant at the time. But your roots held onto something warm. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe that’s just what I needed to believe, to keep from breaking. Maybe I told myself you were okay because I didn’t want to look at the truth too closely.

You were there when I scraped my knees. I still remember your hands—big and calloused, smelling faintly of cinnamon and cloves—lifting me up like I weighed nothing. You always carried me like I was precious. But no one carried you, did they? No one held you when the hurt went deeper than bruises and cuts. No one saw you limping because you made damn sure to hide the limp. You didn’t let us see the cracks. Were you scared we wouldn’t know how to love you if you weren’t always the strong one?

Are you up there now, Big Bubba? I like to imagine you painting constellations with the light you lost down here. Dipping your fingers in stardust and dragging it across the sky. I look for you sometimes, when the night is quiet and the stars are sharp. I look for a flicker that feels like home. The nights are colder now. Not just because the seasons change, but because your starlight smile isn’t here to warm them.

But I carry you still. I always will. Like a book unfinished. Like a story that didn’t get to write its last few pages. I reread the chapters we had together, over and over, hoping I’ll find something new between the lines. Some clue that would’ve helped me understand. But I guess some stories just stop in the middle. Not because they’re done, but because the author couldn’t write anymore.

Sometimes I wonder—if I could’ve opened your heart, what would I have found? Would there have been sun hidden beneath your storm clouds? Would there have been music trapped under the silence Could I have swept away the years that weighed you down like dust on your shoulders?

But you never let me see the cracks, did you? You never let me see the storm. You were always the protector. Even when you were the one who needed saving.

They say you’re at peace now. That’s the phrase everyone uses—“at peace.” But what does that mean? And is it true? Did you find quiet after all that noise in your head? Did the battlefield finally let you rest? I wonder if the skies where you are understand the war you carried inside. The endless battles no one else saw. You were a soldier without armor, fighting demons with your bare hands and your softest smiles. It breaks me to think of how long you fought—how long you endured with no one noticing the blood on your spirit.

Until one day, the weight won. And it swallowed you whole. And now… Now the earth doesn’t feel the same. It tilts differently beneath my feet. It echoes when I walk alone.

I plant flowers where your footsteps used to fall. Not because I think it’ll bring you back, but because I hope it tells the truth. That you mattered. That you were here. That something beautiful can still grow in the soil you left behind.

I talk to you sometimes. In the car. In the shower. In the middle of a crowded grocery store when a song you loved comes on over the speakers. The way grief folds into regular life like that always catches me off guard, like it belongs there.

I hope you hear me. I hope you know that I still carry your name with every breath. That your memory is stitched into the lining of my days. That I wear your love like a second skin—sometimes too tight, sometimes aching, but always there.

And every sob I let fall into the night is just me whispering: “Hey Big Bubba.” As soft as death. As loud as love. As constant as the stars I watch for you.

I miss you. I love you. I forgive you, even if I don’t understand. I couldn't see a life with or without you where I never held affection for you.

And I hope—wherever you are—you’ve found the light you gave away so freely to the rest of us.

Always,

K.C.