A Unique Hero

“You smell like deodorant,” my cousin looked up at me and laughed with glossy eyes as we all gathered in a group hug outside my house. The three of us are like peas in a pod, we basically do everything together and in a time of need, there's nothing more important. We walked up the pavement that led to my house, my aunt following closely behind us. Walking through the front door felt weird and wrong,. It was as if a part of me was scared to be there.

I was awoken at four o'clock in the morning to the words, “Come on, get up. We have to go. Your brother is in the hospital, and they're doing cpr on him.” As soon as I heard those words, I knew it was already too late. He was already gone. I would never see my brother alive again.

I pulled myself out of bed and cautiously made my way upstairs and outside to the front porch. I saw my grandpa. I had never seen him look so vulnerable in my life. He wasn't strong anymore. His eyes were no longer filled with the look of life and determination. He was afraid, and you could see it in his eyes, flashing back to every hospital stay and scraped knee. I sat down on the padded chair we had placed next to the concrete steps that lead into the front yard and did something that I only ever did at the dinner table of my grandma’s house on sunday nights. I bowed my head in silence as I grasped for the right words to say, and I prayed to someone, anyone that would listen. I begged them to let him stay, I begged and pleaded for a miracle. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, my aunt pulled into the driveway. We climbed in her car and started for the hospital. This was the worst car ride of my entire life.

We were about halfway there when my grandpa got a phone call, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “He's gone”

I started to yell

I was screaming in the car in the middle of the freeway.

I was so angry,

how dare he say that, how dare they not save him , how dare life do this to us, to him.

I didn't understand.

About a week later, I walk into the funeral home slowly, preparing myself for what I was about to do. I was about to say goodbye to my best friend of eight years. I walked into the room that held the casket, standing in the doorway staring at the boy that lay in front of me. I was afraid to move or breathe or speak. I didn't want this to be real, but it was. It was real, and it was happening. My family was here with me, but I felt completely alone, so alone and scared. I felt as if I wasn't even there, my body was but my mind wasn't, I couldn't process thoughts, it was as if my entire being was just gone in the abyss. A huge black hole that just consumed my entire soul. I wasn't a person, but a robot just acting as I should and trying not to cry. I finally enter this room full of dread and broken hearts and walk over to the side of the room opposite of the casket and place the bulletin board on its stand. I stood there and admired all the pictures and drawings. Him and I at the elementary school fair, trips to Bear Lake, drawings of Minecraft characters, canyon picnics, camping trips, and personal letters to Santa. Things that an eight year old boy would hold dear.

The morning of his death, my family all gathered in his bedroom, spread out on the floor and on his bed. Discussing memories and quoting things that he had said. We all laughed as tears welled up in our eyes and then simultaneously fell as if he himself was personally conducting an orchestra with our emotions.

I'd like to think of him as a superhero from a video game that just so happened to misplace his extra life chip. Running around the living room in a superman cape as my mom records him, face covered in stickers from the doctor’s office. That was my kind of superhero. The kind that visited the hospital quite often but always came home happy as ever. The kind that smiles at everyone, makes friends wherever he goes, and never showed me anything but love.

He wanted to save us all from the zombies when they came, he was skilled in the art of hide and seek and knew how to shoot a nerf gun better than anyone I know. He was sure to win. Walking out of the smoke in an abandoned building, bodies of the living dead lying on the ground behind him, nerf gun in hand. A unique kind of hero.