Before I start, I want to say that nothing bad happened to Leah and me.

Friday afternoon we went down to the grocery store and stopped to get some takeout. As we drove back towards our house on Huffaker Road, an ambulance came up behind us and passed. A minute later a second emergency vehicle, this time a fire department rescue truck, also passed us. They disappeared before we reached the turnoff to go up the mountain, and we assumed they had kept going towards the next road that leads into Texas Valley.

A neighbor called as we drove up the mountain and asked if we knew what was going on. She heard the sirens coming up, but nothing came by her house. We drove up to her house, which is around the curve beyond us, and were talking when another neighbor came by going down. A few minutes later he came back and told us that Ron, the man who works with John, the grading guy, had turned over his four-wheeler down at John’s house and had been killed.

It was quite a shock to Leah and me. Leah had not seen much of Ron, but I had. He and John worked on our property while we were building, and I’ve seen and talked to him quite a few times over the years. He was as nice a guy as you could want to meet.

The real connection with Ron was that he was the one who actually brought Sam, our dog, to John’s house when John acquired him for his step son around six years ago. At that time Sam was afraid of everyone except John’s step son, John’s wife, and Ron. Sam always came to Ron when Ron was around. He would never get anywhere near me unless Ron was there. Even after Sam came to live with us, he always seemed to recognize Ron’s car, even after Ron bought a new one.

Later in the evening, the same thought occurred to Leah and me: Ron had gotten up Friday morning just like every other Friday, and had gone to work expecting it to be like every other work day. He probably planned where he and his wife would go for dinner. It was a completely normal day. The only difference was that this was the day he died.

We, too, get up every morning, expecting the day to be the same as ever, and never, ever the day we die. But it might be.

My brother Henry died two years ago today, April 6. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just before Thanksgiving. He died seven months and four days after his 70th birthday.

His death still doesn’t seem quite real.

Two years should be long enough to internalize something like the death of a brother, but I don’t seem to be any closer to that than immediately after he died. It’s as if there are two realities, one where he is dead, and another where he is still alive.

The strangest thing for me to contemplate is that in a little over a month I’ll be the same age he was. If I survive until Christmas of this year, I will overtake him and he will no longer be older than me.

The New River rises in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Boone, NC, flows within the crests of the Appalachians through Virginia and then into West Virginia, where it passes through the New River Gorge. It is thought to be a very old river, maybe only as old as three millions years, maybe as old as 320 million years. Some people think it is the second oldest river in the world, but some think perhaps it is not even the oldest in North America. My brother Henry subscribed to the  very-old school of thought.

Henry wanted his ashes scattered in the New River because he wanted to be as close to the creation as possible. That has not been done yet. I’m not certain that his wife will ever do it. It’s a long drive from Chattanooga. We have not had any communication with her since the summer after Henry died, so we don’t know what her plans might be.

But for me, it was time to do something. So I scooped up some ashes from our stove and put them into a small cardboard box. Then, on Wednesday, I started out for the New River Gorge Bridge.

I got there too late in the evening to do anything, so I spent the night in a hotel not far from the bridge. Thursday morning I drove to the visitors’ center on the north side of the gorge to get a look at the bridge and the river, far below. Pedestrians are not permitted on the bridge except for one special day every year, and this was not the day.

I viewed the bridge from the overlook, and then drove the narrow, winding road down deep into the gorge. At the bottom of the gorge there is an old bridge that was once the only way people wanting to go from one side of the gorge to the other could go.

I crossed the wood-floored bridge and parked on the other side of the river. Then I walked out onto the bridge to take a look. The new bridge is so high above the river that it’s hard to see the scale. But Henry was not interested in the bridge, only the river.

I helped a couple of women get some photos of themselves with the bridge in the background, and then waited for them and one other tourist to leave. Then I opened the box of ashes and scattered them.

There was a steady breeze from the east. It took the ashes away. They billowed out in a thin cloud that almost sparkled. I had wondered whether I would have any sense of Henry, despite the purely symbolic nature of the act. But I did not. I thought to take a photo of the sparkling ashes, but by the time I got my camera out the cloud of ash had dissipated and disappeared.

Then I thought, that was like Henry. The ashes were there in a cloud, and then they were not. And Henry was here, with us, and then he was not. That was the closest I felt to him.

One day Henry’s wife may decide to take Henry’s ashes and scatter them into the river, and maybe she won’t. Maybe she already has. If she hasn’t, maybe she will ask us to come with her. And maybe not. However that happens, I think I have done my duty to Henry and his memory.