Today is my little brother Danny Joe’s 37th birthday. For more than 20 years, it’s been a heavy-hearted day, one that fills me with guilt, sadness and wishes for what might have been.

As I write this, Danny Joe is almost 800 miles away from me, living in a state hospital in small-town eastern Kansas. He’s been there since he was 15 years old; I was in college by then. The couple of years leading up to his departure from my parents’ house were brutally difficult for my immediate family. When he was 12, the school district informed us that they could no longer provide services for him, which meant my mom had to stay home. Caring for Danny, who has very severe autism, was more than a full-time job – for all of us.

The combination of no educational support and adolescence made things extremely challenging for Danny, who doesn’t talk. His behavior declined as his temper increased. One weekend when I was home from college, it got worse than we could ever imagine: in a frustrated rage, Danny started breaking out the living room windows with his hands. I woke up and ran downstairs to help, to find shattered glass on the floor and blood all over my brother’s arms and hands. My mom was crying, and my dad trying to restrain him from hurting himself any more. I helped my dad, and then called 911 for an ambulance.

I was 20 years old, pinning my brother to the floor as my parents tried to keep the bleeding down. Soon after that, my brother was being carried out of the front door on a gurney, hands and legs strapped down. It was a only a matter of weeks before he went to live at the state hospital.

But that’s not how I think of my brother most days. I think of the tiny fuzzy-headed baby who came home to a tiny green house when I was five years old. I think of a photograph of me feeding my curly-haired little brother a Bomb Pop when he was three years old. I think of holding his hand while we drifted off to sleep. And I think of drive-in movies, long family car trips and playing in the backyard with our dog, Candy.

My thoughts of Danny Joe are stills rather than motion, but they are vivid. If I had them all in an album, I would write a different question under each photograph: why did you stop talking when you were two and a half? Are you happy where you are today?

My life with Danny Joe has defined everything about me: my oldest friends are those who accepted me, and him, during those especially hard times. I think part of the reason I got in my line of work is to – literally – be a voice for the voiceless. What fight I have in me comes from still fighting battles I probably lost long ago.

And I don’t see Danny as much as I’d like; the last time was two years ago. But whenever I see him, he grins and does something he’s done since our childhood – he leans to me, puts his hand on the back of my head and presses his forehead to mine.

My sadness, guilt and wishes today come from wanting to see him. Wanting to hug him and be with my little brother. But, instead, I settled for a phone call. I sang “Happy Birthday” to him alongside my wife and our son, Asa – Danny’s nephew. When we had finished, one of the staff at the hospital told me this:

“He handed the phone back to me. But he is smiling.”