It all seemed like it happened in a moment, laying in grandma and grandpa’s house in the middle of the night, and then I’m in the kitchen feeling completely empty and knowing I would never see him again. Let me explain a little better…well it didn’t happen in just one single moment; it led to that precise moment through numerous actions. As for what it is, it is the passing of my brother Robert from life to wherever it is that you go to after.

Before I tell you my story that surrounds my brother, let me tell you about my brother, when he was born in September 18, 2007 and he wasn’t doing that well. He was born with major heart problems; first of all he was born with a hole in his heart and the arteries that were supposed to be behind his heart were in front of his heart. So when the doctors tried to operate on him they couldn’t and they could fix some things but not all of the things and they had to wait for him to grow more so the arteries were spread more so he had always had heart problems even since he was born. Now that you know his story let me begin the one surrounding him. It was about 6 months after my sister passed away that I was still saddened by her death and was slightly rebellious because of my anger at her death. I was laying in my room when my smallest brother (he was 2 at the time) came in to my room and took his small…his unbelievably small hand and started smacking the back of my head and wanting me to play and I really wasn’t in the mood to play and my bedroom at the time was in the upstairs. We had a lot of stairs to go up to my room from my brothers’ (I have two) playroom and he, my brother Robert had a hard time going up the stairs so I figured if I put him at the bottom of the stairs he wouldn’t be able to get to me so I could be alone in my room.
My room that just felt really cold to me and yet I still chose to stay there by myself instead of embracing my little brother’s warm hugs and kindness that was the pure kind that only young children can give. It worked only a little too well, my brother sat down at the bottom of the stairs crying a river of tears and crying at the top of his lungs. While trying to get my attention so that I would come get him and we could hang out but no, I ignored him wishing that he would stop trying to play with me and go play with my other brother Richard but no he just wanted to play with me. I was about to give in and go play with him (it had only been a few minutes) when all of a sudden it got really quiet-deathly quiet. Right after it did I heard my mom start yelling and screaming and crying (she had been trying to get Robert to stop for the entire time but it didn’t work) and at that I ran downstairs. When I got down there I saw my mom cradling my brother who looked like he had just fallen asleep in her arms calling to my dad to call 911!!
It turns out my brother had stopped breathing and passed out at least that’s what it looked like at the time. After that it was chaos, my brother was shipped to Syracuse and me and my brother were sent to my grandparents out in Mansfield, PA and we were there for a night or two and I couldn’t sleep so I stayed up all night, after a while my grandma came out to me and asked me to come out to the kitchen and told me that while we were laying in our beds my brother Robert had passed away. Later I found out that he had a heart attack and seizurees because the oxygen wasn’t getting to his brain and think at night and whenever I think about him if only I had played with him he might still be alive today. So I just have to tell you to cherish what you have while you have it. And sometimes you don’t have the luxury of knowing whether you will lose someone or not, as a matter of fact I just found out my aunt has uterine cancer…