Dear big bro,

I am having a hard time.

I don’t talk about Kadek very often, not because he isn’t important, but because saying his name still rearranges something in my chest. He existed in a way that didn’t demand to be remembered, which somehow makes remembering him heavier. He gave quietly. He hoped without spectacle. He loved in a way that never asked for proof.

He bought me a dream catcher once. I hung it above my bed at the time, more out of instinct than belief. Later, after he passed, I moved it. I didn’t know where grief was supposed to live, only that I couldn’t keep it hovering over my sleep. I tucked it away with a note I never finished writing and a red bracelet I meant to give him— one of two I bought so we’d have matching ones. For a long time, I thought I’d lost mine. It turns out it was just waiting for me somewhere else, like so many things he believed in.

Kadek was important because he was my continuity.

Ubud wasn’t just the first place I traveled to solo after my biggest breakup, it was the first place I returned to myself after my life had narrowed around obligation. I already knew how to be alone; I’d done it well in my early twenties. But somewhere along the way, responsibility replaced wanderlust. I learned to stay put out of duty. Even when I traveled constantly for work, it was purposeful, efficient, exhausting. And Bali became the exception… the place I slipped into between flights, between roles, between expectations.

Kadek was the one who made that slipping possible.

Every time I landed, he was there. Same presence. Same sign. Baby sis Umi. Not a flirtation. Not a transaction. A placement. He wasn’t meeting a tourist, he was welcoming me as if I belonged and that matters more than people realize, especially to someone who has spent a lifetime being the capable one.

He would be waiting at the airport with a sign that always said the same thing: baby sis Umi. Not my name alone—never just my name. Something relational. Something placing me in the world. He wasn’t greeting a visitor; he was receiving family. There were entire trips where I was in Bali alone and did nothing except spend time with Kadek. We drove. We ate. We sat. Once, I met his baby cousin, and the feeling startled me—it felt like home in a way that didn’t require explanation.

People tend to misinterpret closeness between men and women. They look for romance, for tension, for something consumable. But my coach understood what Kadek was to me. When you grow up without a father figure, sometimes what you search for isn’t partnership—it’s brotherhood. I’ve always gravitated toward older men as big brothers when I could. I cherished every male friendship that allowed itself to remain just that: protective, steady, unentitled. Kadek gave me that without naming it.

For a long time, I thought Bali was my safe haven. Only later did I realize the truth: Bali was neutral. Kadek was the reason I went so often. He made it safe. There were days I arrived carrying more than luggage, and he somehow knew. We would walk together in silence, side by side, without pressure explaining anything. There was a language barrier between us, but it never limited the depth of our connection. If anything, it stripped it down to what mattered: presence and care without commentary.

Once, he insisted on taking me to a waterfall ritual. I was grumpy and tired and asked if I really needed to go. Kadek had never been insistent about anything before, so when he looked at me and said there was something I was carrying and that he thought it would help, I listened. Not because I believed in rituals, but because I trusted him.

The ritual was a melukat— a Balinese water purification ceremony. The waterfall was cold and heavy, the water pouring directly over my head and shoulders, loud enough to scatter thought. I was told to scream into the water, to let whatever was stuck leave my body. Then I was told to laugh. I remember thinking how strange that was…how could laughter be authentic if it was instructed? But when you’re drenched, standing in the middle of nowhere, having just been given permission to scream, laughter comes easily. It rises from relief. From the absurdity of being human and held at the same time.

That was one of the last places Kadek took me.

Kadek meant more to me than words usually manage. Every time I consciously think of him, I cry. Not dramatically— just the kind of crying that happens when love has nowhere to go. When someone is lost without a proper goodbye, grief doesn’t resolve. It stays active. There was no relational ending. No closing conversation. No gentle tapering off. He was simply gone, mid-care, mid-continuity.

I carry guilt about that. About not making it to Bali within the ninety days after he passed. About the money I had set aside to give him. About avoiding the place that held him because I didn’t know how to arrive without failing him again. I’ve avoided Bali since not only because it hurt, but because he mattered.

What I’m learning now is that grief doesn’t ask to be fixed. Kadek never needed me to perform. On days I wasn’t smiling, he didn’t force me to have a better day. He’d just simply say, “let’s go for ice cream” and I’d watch him sip his hot black expresso in the Bali heat, smoke a cigarette while I swung my legs like a little girl eating a plain vanilla ice cream. He doesn’t need my timing to be perfect. He already knew who I was to him. That’s what makes the loss unbearable at times…there was no ambiguity.

Kadek mattered because he was my continuity when everything else felt fragmented. He mattered because he made safety feel embodied, not conditional. He mattered because he saw what I was carrying before I could name it and without me ever even speaking it into existence and then… he helped me set it down without asking for anything in return.

I don’t know yet how I’ll honor his dreams. Maybe it won’t look like rituals or timelines or doing things the right way. Maybe it will look like living with the same quiet sincerity he did— giving without keeping score, believing without insisting, loving without needing to be remembered for it.

I hope somewhere, he knows I still think of him. I hope he knows I didn’t forget. And I hope he understands that some goodbyes take longer not because the love was weak, but because it was real.