The sun’s warm rays send goose bumps through my body as I’m sitting on the once white bench, tapping my foot to the beat of my iPod. The song takes me back to my childhood. Back to when I was young and naïve. Back to when my life was simple. And back in time to before I lost someone special and my life crashed straight into a brick wall; straight into hell.

It takes me back to the days when I would come home from school thoroughly frustrated, and stomp in the door to find Rocky, my older brother, sitting in the garage completely lost in a song with his guitar. His steady rhythmically tapping, converse covered foot would instantaneously steal my easily lost attention. At his side, was his long board. It’s beautiful and personally customized artwork, but well worn from everyday use. It never failed to capture me and draw me into my own parallel universe, one where no distraction could possibly pull the unconscious smile from my dazed face.

He had a sixth sense, I swear. Or perhaps he just knew me better than I know myself, but whenever any part of my life veered off the tracks, whether I told him or not, he noticed.

Memories are the worst, unexpectedly welcoming themselves to my overcrowded thoughts without invitation. Sitting in class halfway through an algebra test, the images suddenly take control of my vision and I lose the little concentration that I had. Sometimes it’s obvious what triggered the flashbacks and other times I have no idea, but either way it unfortunately allows my abandoned emotions to arise and painfully cut open partially healed scars.

It seems as though he was the simplifier. He would take my problems that I had thought to be huge, just something I would have to let run its course, but instead he would always have a way to show me how to solve it. It was as though it was his second nature. He knew what the answer before I had finished the question. He was the type of person where you would have no idea that he was smart, until he blew you away in a spelling bee.

Even though he possessed and still possess a huge part of my heart, I can’t help but wonder what things would be like if he hadn’t entered my life. Although I cling to every moment I spent with him in my presence, I still fight the conflicting feelings of wishing I had never met him. Part of my heart was buried in the ground with his body. And even though he caused me tremendous pain, I love him and I’d do anything to earn another day with him, my big brother.