I have just returned from a trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I spent a few days visiting my younger brother, Phillip.

Phil and I are chronologically the two closest siblings among the eleven Sullivan brothers and sisters. Like me, he is a musician, though of an entirely different stripe. He is a rocker, a howling r&b singer, fabulous guitar player, songwriter and dynamic performing front man.

Phil is childlike, funny and tenderhearted, easy to shed a tear and expound emotionally, everything straight from the heart. When we are together, we can spend endless hours talking about music, life, faith, and all the ways they weave in and out of our lives. We both suffer from depression, something that I am finding to be common among artistic, expressive people.

When we met for our long visits at my hotel room near the airport, he brought along a very heavy, portable bluetooth speaker, through which we listened to hours of music, some my own. I played for him the music of Benjamin Cortez and Eva Cassidy. We scoured YouTube for all the Burt Bacharach songs we could find. And, in the middle of it all, we sat on the bed and listened together to the tracks on my recent Yuletide CD. He hadn’t yet opened the copy I sent him. He was waiting to listen with me.

After three days of rich, full, often exhausting conversation, I flew home to California, turning it all over and over in my heart and mind. I didn’t want to leave him, and I wish he would just come back to California. But things are never as simple as they seem from the outside looking in. During our time together, I listened to him pour out what life has been like for him in the 10 years since he first went East to take work as a performer. In the ensuing years, he has increasingly kept everything to himself. His silence made it all the more difficult for the rest of us who sat wondering and fearing the worst when his health took a series of very bad turns over the past year or so.

As I sat with him, looking into his eyes and listening to him talk about it, I was reminded of how imagination can take us down some very dark rabbit holes, and the only way back out is with real information, light and truth. I was fearing the worst, and he wasn’t saying anything to banish my fears. Before we parted, I made him promise to communicate with me more often, going forward. Even if there is no good thing to share, share it anyway.

I wonder how many siblings spend precious years far apart, not communicating. We spend every day with some of of device, be it a phone or a computer. Hell, we still have paper and pens and postage stamps. But a moment lost can never be recovered. Life is fragile, brief, and fleeting.

We all need to show up.