It has been nine years since I last spoke to you, since you last told me one of your silly jokes and since I last heard your contagious laugh. It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you’re gone. Twelve should have been the age where you were experiencing things for the first time, not the last. In your short time here you certainly impacted my life as well as everyone else that had the privilege of knowing you.
Dr. Seuss famously said, “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” I wish I would have appreciated each moment that I go to spend with you a little bit more. When you’re young though you never really live for the moment you’re currently in, you’re always in search of the next. I wish I would have realized the importance of time spent together back then, I wish I would have listened to your laugh a little bit closer and had each of our conversations go on for just a few minutes longer.
There are nights where you’re in my dreams, where we’re 12 again. Times are simple and worries are nonexistent. While I don’t usually remember what we do in my dreams, they always end in us taking a picture together on my phone. I always wake up from the dream and check as if by the tiniest chance this time the picture will appear on my camera role; unfortunately that never happens. I then proceed to lie in my bed and let it sink in once again that you aren’t physically here anymore, something that is still a hard thing for me to grasp.
Although you aren’t physically here with us anymore, I still feel your presence. Sometimes you’re the wind and I can hear your voice through the howling. Other times it seems like you’re the sun beaming on my face on a hot summer day, and there are times when I am just sitting in my room by myself and I feel as though your hand is touching me as a sign that everything is going to be okay. All of these things give me comfort knowing that you’re alright.
I think back on all of the events that took place over these last nine years that you didn’t get the chance to experience; going to junior high, and high school, getting your driver’s license, proms, graduation, college. All of these things that are considered a rite of passage of being young.
I often wonder who you would be today. What would your career path be? Would you still watch SpongeBob at the age of 21? Would you still be best friends with your group of friends from elementary school? These are questions that I would love to know the answers to. I wish more than anything that I could simply pick up the phone to find out these answers rather than guessing as to what your responses might be.
I would give anything to hear your voice one more time, to sit on the floor of the gym while our sisters’ played volleyball and talk about anything and everything. To hear you simply say my name, I would give the world. I miss you more than you will ever know. I’m extremely grateful for the bond that we had and it is something I will cherish forever. Keep watching over us, we all miss you.