I’ve sat in the chapel on many occasions, my head panging for an answer: why am I alone here? From our grandfather’s funeral five years ago to our mother’s wedding just last week and all the weekly visits to church in between, my heart was weighed down with so many questions to understand why you weren’t here with me. I kept you close to my heart, though I could never know you. My dear brother, you would been only two years younger, fourteen by now.

But you left us before you could even have your first birthday.

I’ve tried so many times to make out who you would be. Despite our elders, though they mean well, I wish that you would not have turned out like me. I wish you would have been free and strong and full of an innate brightness that I’ve taken many years to come by. I wish that you would have had many friends just with an outgoing heart and uncontrollable smiles that often do more to strain my shy, introverted nature. I wish that you would have had our mother’s eyes and my dad’s skin and inherited all the good genes I hadn’t. Wearily, they all let me know that you would have been someone just like me: beautiful and behaved. But at the end of the day, with nothing else to dwell on, I just wish you would have grown up.

So many times I eavesdrop on my friends’ familial nuisances, their annoying little siblings (many of whom are the same age that you would be now.) In passing, I know I’m in no position to understand how difficult it could be: taking responsibility for a sibling growing up. However, I can’t help the unadulterated jealousy, the grieving envy and the bitter, uninvited tears pooling in. The wet anger heats up in my throat and can’t release everything I’m thinking in the passive aggressive sighs. How much I would have given up to be annoyed by you and have petty fights with you, just so I could have known you—so that I would not be stuck with this unforgivable guessing game.

Whether in bed late in the still night or in a crowded unfamiliar situation, I ache with ambiguous feelings that I know will never crystallize into definite answers. When our parents would fight and I sat in my room trying to block the words out, I contended at that tender age that you did not live so you would not have to experience what I had to, and I pledged to be stronger in your stead. I wished it was better that you would have never felt the way I often did: shaken afraid and horribly alone with only the silence to keep me uncomfortable company. Perhaps it’s purely out of selfishness that I wish you were next to me in all the experiences that no one can truly understand. In face of adversities where I needed someone to lean on, I thought desperately of you and hated myself for being so confused—so self-minded.

More recently, however, someone asked me what I think of fate and the reason why things happen. Perhaps I’ve become more pragmatic throughout the years, because I responded that I absolutely don’t believe in frivolous things of destiny. And it’s true: adversities don’t strike to punish us or to teach some sort of lesson. Millions don't endure unimaginably unfortunate lives for some mysterious, divine reason. The world is plagued with corruption by political and social causes. People die everyday because their body’s biology has failed them. We have good weather because of meteorology, and feel depressed because of the chemicals in our brain. If there is a higher being, it isn’t working against or for us in tacky symbols of praises or misfortunes for our luck and mishaps. Things just happen, and we have to carry on, but perhaps it’s easier said than done. In attempt to make sense of our lives, we anxiously want to pin-point our afflictions on something to blame or learn from, even if it’s something so lofty as destiny.

But at our mother’s wedding ceremony yesterday, I burst into tears for a reason I didn’t really know how to say. It wasn’t the move, or all the changes that came with remarriage. I didn’t want to avoid everyone or keep to myself or be bitter on my mother’s happiest day. But when they called out prayers for those who have passed, I noticed immediately that they didn’t say your name. Choked up, I paralyzed with the overwhelming realization that you were not with us. Somehow, I grew up this far without you, and I thought how much stronger I may have been if you were here with me, how much more open and friendlier and kinder I would be by knowing you. I grieved with a tight lip and trembling hands, ironically praying for answers as to why.

Because upon any hints of rational thought, I know all these wishes are hideously in vain and get lost in the wind. I could ask of the world for pretty much anything else, but it would never be you. I will never get to grow up with you. I will never get to spend Christmas by the fireplace with you. I will never get to cry about our parents’ divorce to someone who utterly understands me. I won’t get to complain to my friends about how annoying you are or tell them how wonderful you are. I will never get to tag you in a National Siblings Day photo, and embarrass you with a lengthy memoir of all our times together. Because those memories never happened, this is the closest thing I’ll have to that.

My dear brother whom only our father saw as he told our mother to look away, whose only place on this earth belongs in a white, heart-shaped urn, a tiny hospital gown and loose baby hairs: I have wished for a million arbitrary moments in my life with you. But right now, I guess I should hope instead. I hope that wherever heaven is, it’s not too far away to cringe at such horridly cheesy words: even though we’ve never met, I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known.