I Bet On The Ending

Chapter 2 - Reminiscing

"Have we got everything?"

"Yes, can we just get in the car?"

Family holidays always played out with mum being stressed and dad strangely not paying the slightest bit of attention to what he was packing as long as it was all in the car and ready to go. We weren't going abroad or anything, just to the coast. We lived in Birmingham, so when we really wanted to go away we would take a trek to Cornwall. Beautiful oceans and soft sand were what you needed for a real break. It was always quietly painful for us all to go after....well, after it all happened.

I remember the small suitcase I had coated in stickers of Bart Simpson shoved in the top of the boot blocking dads view of the rear window. Every time we hit a bump you could hear it knocking on the roof. A lot of the time, when we stay away from home, mum always panics about the house and the things she turned off - or didn't - but this time, our last Cornwall holiday we had neighbours keeping an eye on things. I was eleven at the time of the holiday, and it was three years since we lost Artie, and I held his blankie with me in the back of the car. The journey was far too long for me not to fall asleep at some point.

Signs after trees after signs, we finally made it to a service station and stopped to fuel up. Birds were chirping and the day was starting to get better. Then the realisation hit me that I had lost Artie's blanket. I cried for hours as we searched everywhere. Public toilets, McDonald's, the car. Everywhere, but it had gone. We still went on holiday but I was the most miserable person in Cornwall that week, but as I grew up I told myself that he came back for it. I told myself that maybe Artie was angry that we went away without him and so he took it back.

I told myself as I grew up that everything I do will be to make him proud. He was my older brother, 4 years is a large gap but neither of us ever felt it. Grief apparently hit me hard according to my mum but she never told me how she figured that out. Yes he was my brother and of course, I was grieving but I never acted out. I never blamed anyone.

As I went through high school, college and my first year as a trainee teacher, I made so many mistakes. I made immature mistakes when I was supposed to be mature. I made good mistakes that I learnt from. I made mistakes that could have gotten me in trouble but I learnt from that too. I met girls that made me wish I could have sat in his bedroom and told him what they were like. There were so many times where I could have used his advice, I just never had it.