Went for my first ride since we lost my brother, and it went better than I expected

Lost my riding buddy of 20 years two winters back, and my Dyna sat under a sheet until April. I get what you mean about the garage feeling like a shrine. I couldn't even walk past mine without his voice in my head telling me to quit babying the thing. What finally got me back on was something small. He kept acheap tire pressure gauge in his tank bag and I inherited it, so one day I just checked my pressures because I figured he'd have yelled at me otherwise. That was it. That was the whole excuse to open the garage door. Once I was rolling, same thing you said, closer to him than any of the funeral stuff. I'll add one thing that surprised me. The second ride was harder than the first. First one had all that momentum from finally doing it. Then reality set in that every ride from now on is one he's not on. Don't let that second or third ride talk you back into the sheet over the bike. Just keep rolling it out, even for a short hop to the gas station. The talking to him part, I still do it. Usually on the long straights where nobody can see me mouthing off. Wife thinks I'm odd. I think he'd laugh at half the stuff I tell him.

My angle on this is a bit diffrent. When my dad passed I made the mistake of turning my first ride back into some big memorial thing, out to the cemetery on his old Sportster, halfway across the state. I white-knuckled the whole way, cried into my helmet at every light, and honestly it set me back. Grief on two wheels hits different than grief in a car, your body is busy doing 40 things and there is nowhere for it to go. What actualy worked was boring riding. Short hops to the hardware store, gas station runs, nothing special. After a few weeks of that the bike stopped feeling loaded up with meaning and just felt like a bike again. So if the Sunday loop thing ever feels too heavy for someone reading this, that is not a failure. Some people need the ritual ride. I needed a hundred empty little rides instead.

Mine was my cousin, not a brother, but same deal with the route. For the first month I couldn't take the back way to my folks' place because that was his shortcut. Then one day I just did it and it turned out avoiding it was worse than riding it. wierd how the dodge hurts more than the thing itself.

One thing that caught me off guard, first time I caught myself grinning under the helmet at some dumb thing he used to do on that stretch. Wasn't expecting that. Let it happen, it's all part of it I figure.