Love, Loss, Learning

Mountains

I don't hike anymore. My mom used to get us up at seven in the morning and drive us to the water tank in the mountains. We would hike to rivers, bridges, waterfalls, caves. She had all the trails memorized in her head. Something that looked like a tangled maze to me was a clear path to her.

When I was ten my family became too busy for such mundane things as hiking. That was around the time we all began falling apart. Unknown by me, my oldest sister met her emotional downfall in a boy when I was ten and she was sixteen. My brother began to leave us all behind, preferring the company of dangerous friends over family, and my other sister began to distance herself from me.

But my brother never stopped hiking. While my oldest sister was overtaken by her darker self and my other sister stayed reading in her room, he journeyed into the mountains, away from us and further into his new life. This progressed for four years. In this time, everything changed but these hikes. My dad found a new love, my mother evolved and progressed into a warrior, my sister severed ties with the boy who did his best to break her, my other sister and I grew closer. My brother began taking part in increasingly dangerous things. Mary Jane, mushrooms, psychedelics, vapes, became closer to him than I ever was.

I never knew my brother. We fought, yelled, slammed doors, and said things we wished we could take back. The last year we had, we were kind. We were never close, but we were kind. We smiled, talked, went on the two most valuable walks and spent the most important days of my life together.

He never stopped hiking, exploring. He journeyed into the mountains to help himself breathe, for the fresh air and for the beauty in the untouched. I suppose it is ironic that the place he breathed easy is the place I struggle to suck in a breath. Ironic that the very place he breathed easy is the place he took his last breath.