I never considered myself a storyteller, but I’ve been told that telling the story will help with the healing process. It’s been some time since everything happened, so you’ll have to bear with me if my memory fails me.

It was raining the day I met him. The day I learned of my brother’s accident. I had been sitting in a coffee shop studying for my finals before work when I got the call. I will never forget my mom’s broken voice as she said “Jordan is gone”. I remember wondering what she meant by gone, but I knew. The second she said it, everything just seemed to freeze and I must have known what she meant, but I didn’t want to believe it. My older brother, my rock, the one I went to for almost everything couldn’t be gone. I mustered up the strength to ask mom what she meant by that and she started crying even harder.

“There was an accident,” she said. “It’s raining hard and the other driver was speeding…” I didn’t catch the rest of what she said because my ears had started ringing. I must have sat there for a really long time looking distraught because I bolted when I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.

In a deep voice, he asked if I was alright. He had picked up my phone from the ground because I’d dropped it in my shocked state. How did he know that the world wasn’t okay anymore? One of the most important people in my life was no longer around. I had to make sure my mom was right. I didn’t even answer his question. I grabbed my phone from his hand and speed-dialed Jordan. The phone kept ringing until his cheery voicemail recording played. Maybe mom was mistaken. Maybe it was just a bad accident and he wasn’t gone. I finally stopped long enough to breath and realize the guy was still standing there looking concerned at my frantic state.

I took another deep breath and told him thanks and that I would be fine. Just needed to sort something out. He didn’t look convinced, but it wasn’t something I was ready to share with someone I didn’t know. I packed up my belongings since studying was so far from my mind by this point and headed home. Walking through the front door was a gargantuan task. My always steady hands shook so hard when I turned that knob, hoping so bad that maybe I had heard wrong or that I had just cut my mom off at the wrong time of the call. As I opened the door and took those steps through the door, I knew. I just felt it. I could hear her crying. I could hear the pain and I could feel it in my gut.