Today I ate SpaghettiOs and I thought about calling my brother to tell him.

Every day there’s something that makes me miss that Matt or reminds me that he’s gone. Of course, pictures do it. Sometimes it’s looking in the mirror when I’m tired and seeing our same veiny eyelids. Other times it’s a song or hearing our Dad’s voice, which of sounds like an older version of Matt’s voice. When a 40-something-year-old patient tells me about their irrational fear of sudden death, that can stir emotion in me.

But today it was SpaghettiOs.

I remember the, we’ll call it “SpaghettiO Day”,  clearly. I probably remember it mostly because of the SpaghettiO smell. Matt was making lunch while he was on the phone with some girl with big bleach blonde hair and leathery skin (obviously long before the Jenny days). He stretched the phone cord all the way down the basement stairs and shut the door. He did everything to get me to go away when I tried to tell him that lunch was burning. Eventually, when it started smoking, he came up to find the SpaghettiOs so burnt that he had to throw the pan away, too.

Today, I would’ve told him SpaghettiOs are still gross, but I had such a craving for SpaghettiOs. He prolly would’ve made some joke about SpaghettiOs or being pregnant and most likely Matt would’ve burst into song trying to sing the old commercial jingle. He’d already know because I would’ve told him in the Fall. He would tell me about Riley’s latest demonstration of her intellect, something funny Reese said, and how big Paige is getting. Then, he would’ve ended the conversation by telling me how proud he was of me (because every normal brother does that, right?) and how excited he was to meet the new baby. I would let him go so he could get home to Jenny for dinner.

SpaghettiOs are the worst.