Water their pond.

 

I’ve been sitting with this photo in my phone for weeks, not knowing whether to post it or not. This pond was the last project my brother built before… well, before everything changed. Before his new relationship took him somewhere we couldn’t follow. We used to run a little crafting workshop together paint-splattered aprons, wood shavings everywhere, mugs forgotten on shelves while we worked late into the night laughing about dumb stuff. And then one day, he was gone. Just… radio silence.

His partner pulled him away from all of it. From us. I’m not here to demonize her love makes people do all kinds of things but she didn’t want to share him. Not even with his family. He started pulling back, ghosting messages, missing birthdays. The last thing he said to me before the silence was, “I’ll be in touch.” He wasn’t.

But I kept tending to the pond. Our little turtle Willy kept swimming circles in the water my brother poured his heart into. And a few weeks ago, while cleaning leaves from the edge, I snapped this photo and sent it to him. No bitterness, just: “Thank you.”

He didn’t reply for three days. And then... he did. A long message. Something had shifted. “It’s like a fog lifted,” he wrote. “I don’t know what came over me all this time.” He apologized. Profusely. Said he missed the smell of sawdust, the paint on his hands, and even the way I always bossed him around like I was older. He told me he stood up for himself for us. That his partner had cried, apologized, said she never meant to isolate him. And she let him go. Not to leave her, but to come back to himself.

We’re meeting for coffee in three days. He asked me to bring his apron. I cried for an hour just holding it. The Tedooo app was where we used to list all our handmade projects, and it’s still up, untouched since he left. I never shut it down. I guess I couldn’t. But now he says he wants to log in again. Maybe even make something together. Just like before.

If you’ve got someone out there who feels far away right now don’t give up. Water their pond. Keep it clean. You never know what kind of messages will make it through the fog.

Source: Facebook - Gardening Hints Tips and DIY crafters on tge Tedooo app/ shared by Ruth Wilder