So I was 13 and watching the Mortal Kombat cartoon (Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, look it up, it’s amazingly terrible) when our phone rang. Back then I was living with my dad and my step-mom, but I’d see my mom every weekend. She called our house and asked to talk to my dad. I thought it was kinda weird because she’d usually talk to me for longer than a, “Hi, where’s your dad,” but cartoons man, so I shrugged it off and told my dad to pick up the phone. 

Anyhow, I was sitting and watching the last episode, Liu Kang and the others were trying to beat Shao Kahn, all that hero stuff. My dad called me to come downstairs and I remember being kinda irritated, because it was the season finale and I was Mortal Kombat obsessed and needed to know what happened. My step-mom told him to come upstairs instead and they came into my room. 

Again, odd, to have both parentals in my room for no reason. It was Saturday morning so sitting in bed watching cartoons was the norm, so there was no real need for them to come in like that. Still, I shrugged it off, and kept trying to watch the episode past my dad’s shoulder when he sat in front of me, my step-mom sitting behind me. 

The extra odd part was that my dad looked like he was about to cry. I hadn’t connected the dots yet, I just kind of made note of it and proceeded to try and catch the last two minutes of the show. 

Then he told me that my big brother was in a car accident.

And I remember actually kind of shrugging that off, too, because my brother was my hero, you know? He was big and strong and he probably just had a light scratch or something, and we probably had to go pick him up from the hospital since my mom doesn’t drive. No big deal, no need for tears, no need to interrupt my Mortal Kombat finale.

But no.

No hospital.

It’s been 18 years today since my brother died, and even if it was so long ago I sometimes feel like it just happened yesterday, and sometimes feel like, man, I should be able to just pick up the phone and call him and tell him about all the cool stuff I’m doing. I wonder what he’d think of the books and the cosplay and all that stuff, and get kinda sad because I know he’d be proud of his geeky little sister and probably threaten to beat up any of the haters I get even if I’m an adult, lol, but that’s what big brothers do, especially brothers named Glenn Berry  :)