“It’s too tight,” I say to my older brother Eric from the bathroom. I’m not even wearing a dress shirt, and if I knew neck sizes, I would know that the collar was at least an 18 and a half measurement. If I had been wearing a dress shirt though, it could have been all the way down to 15 and I would still be fine. Yet despite this, it feels like a 12 and a half.

  “What are talking about?” My older brother says to me. “Let me see that.” He strides up beside me and sets two fingers over the rims of my collar, then drags them around in a semi-circle to feel the space. “Man, you’re just being difficult. And is that really the nicest thing you got?” he says to me, laughing. I pull my eyes away from the mirror and look, almost enviously, at his clean, pressed, red dress shirt and his expensive red tie. Because of my tendency to forfeit my attention to anything shiny, I watch for a minute as the light makes the little red squares on his tie glow in different places. Some shine a ruby red, others reflect a vibrant crimson, and others still seem to turn completely white when placed directly under the light. It reminds me of a Christmas tree, whose lights seem to scatter back and forth between the evergreen needles in some strange, unpredictable rhythm.

  “Well,” I say once my childish gawking is thoroughly sated. “I really don’t do these type of things very often, like you. I don’t go to formal events, or go to church that much. So I never really needed anything that nice.”

  “Well,” my brother starts, sounding almost chastising. “Maybe if you did go to church more often, you’d be prepared for this.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I tell him. I observe myself in the mirror once again, this time analyzing my hair. Is it too curly? Is it too coarse? Is it too…   “You look fine, Fabio. Come on. We gotta go.” He pats me on the back one time, then walks out of the room. I don’t believe that I look bad, but I do worry that I don’t look good enough. I want to look as nice as possible. I won’t have another opportunity, so I know I have to get it right the first time. I turn my head, scaling my scope up my face in the mirror. This morning in particular, I appear immensely worn. Grey hues surround my sockets, making my eyes appear sunken in. Blemishes flourish in the entirety of my face. The general color of my face is faded, like the dye fled from the cloth which composed it. And the hems of my collar still hug my neck somehow.

  “You about ready?” my other brother, my mom’s eldest son, Josh says from the other side of the door. I say I am, and we all pile into the car. Josh is driving, his girlfriend is riding shotgun, and Eric sits right beside me in the back seat. Much of it is a haze, honestly. I barely notice anything that’s going on around me as I bury myself in thought. Not that it is uncommon for me, but that something about it today makes it extra heavy. Though, not necessarily in a bad way.

  In my head, I am running out of my house. I’m racing someone to get to the trampoline. I hop over the wood railing of the porch and barely manage to recover my pace after I land. I hear a quick succession of footsteps from the stairs behind me and it makes my feet lighter for some reason. “I’m gonna beat ya this time!” I yell to the person I’m racing.

  “No you’re not, you cheater!” I hear from over my shoulder. I did in fact cheat, too. I have a head start of at least a few feet. But I don’t care. I never get to the trampoline first. I always come in second, no matter how fast I run. This time though, I am going win. Maybe it isn’t an honest win, but it’s a win nonetheless.

  “You’re too slow!” I yell out tauntingly. Yet, just as the words escape my mouth, the frantic footfalls of my competition become alarmingly loud. I can feel wakes of wind skate across my cheeks as I run with renewed vigor. I’m not going to let this victory elude me.

  The full distance to the trampoline from the house isn’t but maybe eight yards total, but as the way imagination does, the experience is horrendously romanticized. I run like the ground beneath me is a sea of hot coals, not allowing my heels to linger upon its surface for longer than a millisecond. My goal, a big, black, bouncy ring, calls to me from the horizon. I run faster than my heart can beat to heed its beckoning. If a falter, I will surely award my opponent the glory I so righteously deserve. I close in on my destination, and my rival closes in on me. Closer, closer it comes, until I am within a leap’s distance. Then I let my feet come free of the coals whose charring heat inspired my agility, and soar through the air with my arms spread wide. I fly, leaving my opponent stuck on Earth to watch me snatch the stars out of the sky. Then I crash, harmlessly against the lenient Firma of Terra trampoline. I stand up triumphantly and say to my defeated foe, “I win! I win, I win, I win!-You suck!” I laugh, and so does the loser. We laugh together and no feelings or pride is hurt. I enjoy my win, and the other person hides under the fact that I cheated as an alibi for losing.

  Then I awake from my introversion to the sound of my cellphone ringing. A familiar voice spits out of the speaker phone. Is it my dad? Is it my uncle? Is it my mom? Who is it? I can’t really tell, nor I can I explicitly discern what is being said. The haze of my mood this day masks everything I hear under a veil of ambiguity. I listen, trying so hard to decipher the flurry of words that are flailing themselves at me. I answer any questions asked with an automatic, shallow response. The only thing I catch and actually invest some thought into is the question, “You’re with your brother right?”

  Without even realizing what I’m saying I ask, “Which brother?” Josh looks back at me as if to say, “Which one do you think?” I feel stupid for a second. “Oh yeah, the one that’s driving me.” I chuckle nervously, then coast through the rest of the conversation without talking more than I have to. I shut my phone and shove it into my pocket, relieved at finishing my obligatory social interaction. I go through the rest of the car ride without saying anything else. I instead continue shoveling dirt over my face until it covers my eyes with memories.

  One minute, I’m looking at someone from under a huge Gazebo. I watch the person swat one of those big X/O pyramids of the oversized Tic-Tac-Toe games you see in playgrounds sometimes. My little sister Michal is busy playing on a slide in the background as this person is being mesmerized by the hypnotic spin of the yellow pyramid. She smiles, one of those great, big “Look at me!” smiles as she slides gleefully down. Once she lands on solid wood chips, she runs over to the person, still smiling, and asks, “Did you see that? Did you see?!”

  After that, I find myself sitting in a big truck, listening to someone sing slightly off-key while driving. But I pay little attention to the soured notes, as I am busy wondering what presents may be waiting for me at the place we are going. I’m so eager that I can hardly sit still, and I start tapping my foot spastically against the floor mat. The driver stops singing briefly to tell me to stop tapping and calm down.

  Next, I’m saying I’m sorry to someone with tears smeared across my face. Though the pain is gone, the person carefully holds a broken finger, bound in gauze. The person tells me I am forgiven, and we hug to let each other know that there is no animosity between us anymore.

I tell this person something involving the word “love.” I’m not sure exactly what.

  A few memories later, Eric taps me on the shoulder. “We’re here,” is all he says. I look out the window and see a well maintained single story building. Everyone gets out and starts heading towards the door. Josh and his girlfriend are saying something about us being late. Me and Eric are completely quiet, though. We know there isn’t anything we can say to make things better. Josh is quiet too, after he finishes talking to his girlfriend. Then we all start walking through the doors in uncomfortable silence. I follow up behind Josh and glance back at Eric, who hesitates. “You coming?” I ask him. He simply looks at me, half smiling, half not. “I figured as much,” I say to him, knowing he’ll be waiting there when we come back out.

  I proceed inside, into a small room. There is a TV perched on a stand in the center of the room. Josh and a few others pass by me into the next room. I, however, watch what’s on the TV for a while. Pictures. Lots of pictures of someone. Some pictures I remember, and some I don’t. But all the images, no matter what they are, make something hot and wet trip over my eyelids and fall down to my chin. After procrastinating as long as I can, I head through a door on my left. My legs barely manage to support the burden presented by the rest of my body. I shake uncontrollably as I look over at someone lying in a casket in front of me.

  My collar coils itself around my throat as I see this person wearing a red dress shirt. The hems forbid breath from passage as I become lost in the intricate little glowing squares all over this person’s tie. And I swear, to whatever God may be listening, that the size of my collar must be 12 and a half as I see how pale my big brother Eric’s face is.

  I try to walk away, and finally my legs are unable to defy the weight of my sorrow, and I collapse to the ground. My mom tells my dad to hold me, and I am carried away in his arms over to a couch in the corner of the room. A haze takes me again, and I become unaware of anything that is going on around me. Everything becomes a blur.

  Then, through all the tears, and all the soreness that encircles my eyes, I emerge from the haze. I am walking outside, by myself. I see Eric standing where he was before, with all the insipidity now gone from his skin. He doesn’t say anything this time. But he still tells me something.

  He hands me a card. I look down at it and see Eric, smiling one of those great big, “Everything is going to be okay!” smiles with his arms propped up on a fishing dock. I see a mischievous, yet kind-hearted, college boy with everything going for him. I see a man that is completely devoted to his morals and to his God. Then I flip the card over.

  I see the exact same picture of the dock, the lake, and the trees in the distance. But I don’t see Eric anymore. I flash my sight away from the card to see that Eric is no longer in front of me. Swallowing the bitter pill of reality, I look back down at the card.

  In Eric’s stead are the words “Romans 12:2,” followed by the words, “And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” It is Eric’s life verse. For a moment, I wonder why the will of God would be to take Eric from this world. But the thought is quickly disposed of, and I return my eyes to the card once more. I marvel at how appropriate Eric’s quote is for this day. I smile, filling some of the hollow space in my chest with contentment.

  The last thing I do before I walk back inside is thank God that I won’t remember Eric as he looks in his casket. I thank Him that Eric gave me so many pictures of a laughing, playing, singing, and forgiving big brother. And I thank Him that so many others will think of a loving son, a caring friend, an exemplary believer, and, most of all, a wonderful person when they think of Eric. The only real thing that bothers me now is the fact that my kids will miss out on such a great uncle.

  But then the doors swing open, and I taste warm air as it pours into my lungs. I still feel a little ache in every breath, but at least my collar isn’t a size 12 ½ measurement. I feel glad that it is back to being a size 18 ½.