i had a dream about my deceased brother and it was... surreal. my brother has been decease for almost 10 years and although, i do miss him. i don't think of him much consciously. at the time of his death, we weren't really that close. we didn't fight all the time or anything... we just weren't as close as we had been when we were younger. as a kid growing up, my brother was my best friend, my idol. i remember waiting by the door for him to come home everyday after school. if he was even a minute late, i would throw a fit and i'd worry that something had happen to him. we were really tight. even as time went on and he got a little bit older, he still made time for me. then, we moved away from the neighborhood we grew up in and things changed... in a real bad way. he didn't have the time or the patience for me anymore. he wanted to stay out and hang with his friends. mind you, there is about a 6 year age difference between us, but still i felt entitled to his time because i was there first and he was my best friend. he, unfortunately, did not share my same train of thought and got caught up with the wrong type of people, who did the wrong kinds of things. i started to resent my brother for how he acted towards me.. like what about me? didn't i matter to him anymore? anyways, i did everything i could to piss him off enough to where he would pick fights with me, so i could get him in trouble and make him have to stay home with me. i had my little sister around to help plot and scheme... it only worked some of the time though. i think he eventually caught on. soon, i just gave up. he wasn't the same person to me anymore, i didn't understand it at the time, but he felt he needed to grow up. in a way, he did... but he went about it the wrong way. he got involved in a gang. i think that i didn't want to believe that my brother could be stupid enough to do that, so i ignored it. i would ask him all these questions about where he was going and who with... he would brush me off and tell me to mind my own business and eventually, i did. after that, things between us were never the same.
my brother had this girlfriend and she was very nice, despite my brother telling her that she didn't have to be. she always spoke to me and my little sister and bought us things, nothing major but still. i really liked her. i do believe that had my brother lived, they would have stayed together. anyways, it was her grandparents anniversary party and she had come over to get him so they could celebrate with her family, i remember sitting there watching a movie with my mom and her boyfriend at the time, he came out of his room and told my mom where he was going and said he'd be back later. my mom said ok. i said to my brother, good-bye markel... he looked at me and said see ya later. now, usually as a kid who had this rivalry with my brother... i never called him by his name.. it was either "booty-head" "stupid" or "ugly" and i never said good-bye... always bye. i didn't know at the time, but that was the last time i would ever speak to my brother again.
in December of 2000, my brother was shot and murdered outside of his girlfriend's parents' home. everything that day happened so quickly that it's all kind of a blur. after he left, we continued to watch our movie, about 25-30 minutes later, the phone rings. i answered and it's his girlfriend on the other line, she says to me, "put your mom on the phone, markel's been shot." at first, it didn't register in my mind but i did as she asked. i told my mom, "kiera is on the phone, she said markel got shot." i heard the words come out soo shallowly. my mom looked at me, trying to register what i had just said.. she jumped up and exclaimed "what?" as she reached for the phone. i barely listened to her talking as i tried to come to terms with what i just said... how was it possible that the person i just saw no more than half a hour ago had been shot. my mom told her boyfriend what she knew and they left. she asked me to ask my aunt to watch us until she got back. i agreed. now, from the calmness that she embodied at the point, i thought, it must not be that bad. i went outside to tell my little sister and cousin what i had heard and we just collectively brushed it off. we started to play our games... next thing i know, another close family friend comes rushing through our buildings gate yelling for me.. saying "WHERE IS YOUR MOM?? YOUR BROTHER WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD!!"
the world paused or at least that was what it felt like to me. i told her she had already left... she said ok and said that we were going to stay with her. at that point, all i was thinking was how is it that my brother could get shot in the one place that death was almost certain? my mom was too calm for that to have been the case... she had to be mistaken. i sat frozen for a long time because i needed to register what was taken place. i don't really think i believed her because i didn't cry. i just sat and then asked how she knew. she said that she had been driving home from the back way and noticed a huge crowd of people, so she asked her niece to get out the car and go see what happened and she had agreed. she walked over and saw what i presumed to be my brother laying on the ground with his girlfriend holding him and crying. she said that he was spitting up blood and that it was just too sad. i didn't want to believe what they told me until i heard from my mom. so i just acted like it wasn't true. at some point, my mom called our family friend and asked if we could stay with her until everything was taken care of, she of course agreed.
she said that we should just pray and that was exactly what we did. we spent the night at her house and the next morning my mom had called for me and my little sister to come home. we walked out of our friend's house and i saw three boys that my brother used to hang out with standing in a circle off to the side, i didn't realize it then, but they knew something that i was about to find out. when we got home, my mom's boyfriend was sitting on the couch, he looked at us and said good morning and said that my mom was in her room. me and my sister walked back to her room, saw her sitting on her bed and seen her crying. we rushed to her and said don't cry mommy. she then told us that our brother had died. i remember looking her in the face and just crying and shaking my head. i couldn't believe he was really gone. i know we didn't always get along but that didn't mean i didn't want him around. i got up from her bed and ran out of my house... i walked to my cousins house and as i passed those three boys again, one of them asked if i was going to be ok and offered to give me a hug. i said yes, but declined his hug because he wasn't the one i wanted to be hugging. after that, i don't remember much except the funeral and then yeah. there were days where i wished i would have tried to get him in trouble, just because he would have had to stay to clean or something. my brother was only 17 when he died. he wasn't even able to buy cigarettes, join the military without parental permission and he was dead.
i don't know what made me dream of my brother today. i do know that i loved him more than i told him and that i miss him everyday.
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