Navigating Life and Grief on My Brother’s First Birthday Without Him
Today would have been my big brother Adarsh’s 38th birthday. It’s his first birthday since he passed away earlier this year, and I’m struggling more than I know how to express.
Growing up, October was one of my favorite months of the year. The weather was finally getting cooler; we had multiple family birthdays to celebrate, and there was always something to look forward to. Navratri, Bathukamma, Halloween, Diwali, and all the festivities leading into the end of the year this season feel particularly special.
I used to associate this time of year with excitement, togetherness, and anticipation. But after experiencing years of compounding grief, and especially since losing Adarsh this past April, it’s become increasingly difficult to find that same joy in life.
It’s strange how the things that once brought you so much happiness can become reminders of everything you’ve lost.
Neither Adarsh nor I particularly liked celebrating our birthdays in the traditional sense. There was usually great food and something sweet, but we preferred to acknowledge the occasion quietly and reflect on another year of life. Since we spent most of our lives physically separated, birthdays were another opportunity to remind each other how much we meant to one another.
We were incredibly sentimental siblings. Every year, we’d exchange thoughtfully written letters, sometimes practically essays, followed by long phone calls, and in more recent years, voice messages, too. We put so much care into finding the right words for each other, reflecting on our lives, celebrating personal growth, and offering encouragement for whatever challenges lay ahead.
I still have those letters and messages. I reread them and listen to his voice often, and I know I’ll cherish them for the rest of my life.
One of the things I miss most about my brother is how deeply he understood me. He knew my history, my struggles, my ambitions, and all the complicated circumstances from cultural and generational trauma to everything in between that shaped who I am. He could recognize things I was feeling before I even knew how to articulate them. I attribute a lot of this to the fact that he endured many of the same hardships, the main difference was that he had to do that without an older sibling helping guide him. I'll never know the full extent of what he went through, but I know he tried to do his best to take what he learned from those experiences and support me however he could as much as he could.
Last year, in 2025, I allowed myself to celebrate my birthday for the first time since 2016, largely because of his and Adam’s encouragement. They both wanted me to enjoy my life and make the most of the opportunities I’d worked hard to create for myself.
This past summer, my first birthday without him, to be honest, I could barely get out of bed. Despite Adam’s best efforts to make the day special, I spent most of it overwhelmed by grief.
Every 'first' without Adarsh has been difficult, but birthdays and holidays feel especially painful because they were always such meaningful moments for us.
And now, on his birthday, I’m reminded all over again that there will never be another birthday message exchanged between us. No more long conversations about the past year, no more encouragements for the next, no message right at the time of my birth in New York down to the minute, and no opportunity to tell each other how proud we are of each other’s resilience in navigating and enduring more than any person should realistically have to.
I have a lifetime of his words to look back on, and yet, I wish I could hear what he’d have to say to me for everything else that lies ahead in my life. He was my person and main confidant for the majority of my life, and I miss him more than I thought a person could miss another.
It’s been nearly six months since Adarsh passed, and I still struggle to comprehend how much my life has changed.
I wish he was here to help me process everything, just as he always did.
I still write to him and talk to him every day. Sometimes I find myself searching through old messages or revisiting conversations, trying to piece together what he might say about something I’m experiencing now. I think about how he’d approach a problem, what perspective he’d offer, or whether he’d tell me I’m overthinking something, or to take a chill pill and relax.
Sometimes those memories bring me comfort. Other times, they make me angry that memories are all I have left to turn to.
There are so many things I want to tell him, so many questions I wish I could still ask, and so much of life ahead that I never imagined having to navigate without my only sibling.
Grief has also made it incredibly difficult to find purpose and motivation in things that once meant so much to me.
Running a small business is challenging enough under ordinary circumstances. While I love staying busy and helping my clients, and some don’t even know I’ve been grieving, trying to maintain the same enthusiasm while grieving my brother, who was so central to my life, has been exhausting.
I’ve questioned whether any of it is worth the effort anymore. Not because I’ve stopped caring about what I’ve built, but because losing Adarsh has fundamentally changed how I think about my time, my priorities, and what I want from life.
I’ve also had to navigate situations where people have shown remarkably little compassion, and in some cases, have seemingly taken advantage of my vulnerability in ways that threaten my business and my livelihood.
It’s difficult to comprehend that kind of behavior, especially during a time when I’m already struggling, but as my brother often reminded me, I can only control my own actions. I can’t control how others choose to treat me, no matter how unfair or cruel their behavior may be.
I’m trying to hold to that perspective, even when it’s difficult.
Something I shared in my original reflection about Adarsh is that we were both fairly reclusive people. We learned early in life that the best way to protect ourselves was by keeping our guards up, handling our problems independently, and avoiding burdening others with what we were going through. "Keep the peace," if you will.
For most of my life, Adarsh was the exception to that rule. Eventually, Adam became one too. They were the two people who knew me most completely, including the complicated part of my life that I rarely shared with anyone else. Losing one of those two people has left me feeling incredibly vulnerable.
There are days when the weight of everything feels unbearable, when I question why life unfolded the way it did. It feels like there is no escape for this pain. I just have to face it. Logically, I understand that I can’t change the past. But grief doesn’t always respond to logic, no matter how much you try to reason your way through it. Adarsh always encouraged me to live fully, build meaningful relationships, and not allow difficult experiences to close me off from the world. I wish he listened to his own advice.
So, despite how uncomfortable and frightening it feels, I’ve been trying to do exactly that. I’ve been opening up to people more than I ever have before. And it’s been hard. I want to believe that I’m wanted, understood, and loved by the people around me. But I also struggle with accepting those feelings when so few people really know me, my history, or the experiences that have shaped my life. How can someone truly understand me when there’s so much about my story they’ve never known?
I realize that people don’t need to know every detail of someone’s life to care about them. But after spending so many years feeling understood by my brother without having to overexplain myself, learning how to build that kind of trust with others feels overtly intimidating. That understood feeling is irreplaceable and doesn't develop easily.
When I do open up, I often get the sense that people don’t really know what to say. I’m met with familiar expressions of sympathy, or sometimes just an acknowledgement of how much I’ve been through. I appreciate the intentions behind those words and I know they come from a good place of general support, but grief can be incredibly isolating when the conversation ends there and running a small business is pretty isolating all on its own, too.
I don’t expect anyone to have the right answers. That's simply not fair. I certainly don’t have them myself. But sometimes I just want someone to listen, ask questions, or be willing to sit with the uncomfortable parts of my story without feeling the need to fix anything or find placating words. As a darker bonus, I hope to avoid opportunists who just want to listen so they can spread gossip or use my vulnerability against me - something both my brother and I have had to deal with before.
I’m learning that being vulnerable doesn’t guarantee being understood, but I’m trying not to let that discourage me from continuing to connect with others. After all, if I don't open myself up, I can almost guarantee that other's will not be able to connect with me.
One of the most unexpected and meaningful things to happen since Adarsh passed has been connecting with people from different chapters of our lives. When I first wrote about losing him, I mentioned hoping that sharing his story publicly might help me connect with people who knew him and hear memories I hadn’t heard before.
I never imagined how much comfort those connections would bring me.
In recent months, several of his former cohort and friends from medical school have lovingly reached out. Adarsh and I never really got to see each other during much of his time in medical school, and while we remained close, those years were very complicated. There were parts of that chapter of his life that I only knew from a great distance.
But hearing from the people who lived alongside him during those years has given me an entirely new perspective. They’ve shared stories about their time together, their friendship, their studies, his personality, basketball, and the little things that made him unmistakably Adarsh. I’ve learned about his routine, his sense of humor, the conversations they shared, and the ways he made others feel welcome and supported. I’ve also been fortunate enough to see photos of him that I’d never seen before. It’s an emotional experience to discover new images and stories about someone you thought you knew better than anyone.
There’s a strange combination of happiness and heartbreak in seeing my brother alive in moments I never witnessed. I find myself studying the photos, looking at his expressions, imagining the conversations happening around him, and wondering what he was thinking or feeling in those moments. It feels like I’m getting to know another version of him, one he wasn't able to share with me at that time.
What has been especially comforting is how effortless it’s been to connect with his friends. Even though we’re essentially strangers, talking to them feels familiar in ways that are difficult to explain. It's as if I can see slightly different facets of my brother through each of these cherished encounters. I can understand why they were so close and why so many considered him a brother.
They’ve been incredibly kind, thoughtful, and generous with their time and memories. I’m so grateful that he had those wonderful people in his life and that, even after so many years, their love and respect for him remain.
Truthfully, I hope these connections continue. Not only because I want to learn more about my brother, but because there’s something meaningful about building relationships with people who carry their own memories of him. It’s a way of keeping part of his story alive that I otherwise might never have known.
In that same spirit, writing has been one of the few constants in my life.
When I was sent thousands of miles away to boarding school as a young child, Adarsh encouraged me to start writing as a way to process my experiences and make sense of the rapidly changing world around me. I took his advice, and I’ve continued writing ever since.
He even helped me come up with my first pseudonym when I began publishing my work. For years, much of what I wrote and created remained private or was shared without my real name attached. Now, for the first time, I’m allowing myself to share more openly as Anusha.
It’s uncomfortable, especially when so much of what I’m writing involves deeply personal reflections that I’ve spent most of my life protecting, but I think there’s something important about allowing myself to be seen, even when I don’t have everything figured out.
I don’t want my brother’s story to end with his passing, and I don’t want the grief surrounding his death to overshadow the life he lived and the person he was. There is so much more to him than I could ever capture in a single piece of writing or post on social media.
And there is so much more to our story with A-Game Creations, too. Without my brother's encouragement, I wouldn't be where I am today. I hope that by continuing to write, share memories, and connect with others, I can honor the person he was while slowly learning how to navigate life without him. I don’t know what that process will look like, and I’m beginning to understand that there may never be a point when everything suddenly feels okay again and certainly not as quick as what things felt like when it seemed like everything was falling apart.
For now, writing and creating helps give me some shape to feelings that otherwise seem impossible to untangle. And in a way, every time I sit down to create something, I’m continuing something my brother started with me when I was just a little girl. This business would not exist if it weren’t for his, my mom’s, and Adam’s encouragement of my creative talents.
To celebrate my brother this week, Adam and I are going to one of Adarsh’s favorite restaurants here in San Antonio to celebrate his birthday. It’s also where the three of us shared our last meal together. I regret not taking a photograph that day. I wish I’d known how much that ordinary moment would mean to me, but Adam and I remember it fondly, along with the many conversations, laughs, cries, and memories we were fortunate enough to share with him over the years.
Adarsh was one of the biggest supporters of our intercultural relationship, even when others struggled to accept it. He encouraged us, stood by us, and made sure we knew that our happiness mattered. Having his love and support meant more than I can ever adequately express. I’m grateful that Adam and Adarsh developed such a meaningful relationship of their own and that we have those memories to hold on to.
Today won’t be the birthday celebration I wish we could have had. There won’t be a phone call, a thoughtful message, or another opportunity to tell him everything that’s happened lately, but there will be good food and two people who love him dearly, remembering the time we were lucky enough to have together. And perhaps, that’s enough for today.
I still don’t know how to live in a world without my big brother. I miss his guidance, his reassurance, his intelligence, his humor, and the comfort of knowing that someone who understood so much of my life was always there for me. I’m grateful for the years we had, the memories we made, the lessons he taught me, and the love that continues to shape who I am.
I know he wanted me to keep living, creating, learning, loving, and finding happiness, even when life was difficult. I’m not quite sure how to do all that right now, but I’m trying.
Happy birthday, Adarsh annayya. I love and miss you so much.
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