Loss doesn’t just shape human identity, it *is* human identity, in a way that’s either profound or catastrophically inefficient depending on whether you’re the one carrying it or the one trying to build a system around it.

William Robinson was a Baldwin County Sheriff’s Deputy, twenty-six years old, and my best friend. He’s been dead for thirty years and I still haven’t figured out what to do with that.

My brother William was a Baldwin County Deputy Sheriff. He was killed in the line of duty on December 17th, 1995. I was 25 years old, and I have never been the same person since.

I sat in that execution chamber and watched the man who killed my brother die, and I still don’t have a word for what I felt. Closure wasn’t it.

Flash, our Miniature Dachshund, lived 16 years in this house and left a hole that doesn’t make sense on paper. This is an honest account of what that actually means.