Luca.

I was born exactly 1 year and 3 days after my big brother. Every year, 3 days before my birthday, instead of baking his favourite cake and hugging him tight whilst he blows out the candles, we lay flowers on his grave. Yellow roses. I don't know why it's yellow roses, in all honesty they aren't the prettiest. But my mum likes them. And if she has to lay flowers on her child's grave every year, she gets to choose whatever damn colour she likes. I won't say a word. On his 18th birthday, I knew my mum was silently mourning in pain, and that the rest of the family never seem to remember details. So I baked him a vanilla sponge with raspberry jam - mum's favourite. I covered it all in blue frosting and sculpted little clouds and bears out of modelling fondant. I wrote his name across the front as if he was in the clouds. She sobbed. Even though I never got to meet him, I guess I always felt more of a connection to him than everyone else. Everyone tells me I was the rainbow baby. After my mum lost him in delivery, she unexpectedly fell pregnant with me 3 months later. I wasn't planned, clearly. He was due on the 27th April, but due to an infection, my mum fell sick and he was delivered early - the 24th January. I was then born the 27th January the following year, but on the number of his original due date. Which coincidentally, also happens to be one of my grandmothers' birthday, and my other grandmothers' death anniversary. For some reason, my mother has always been convinced that these numbers all surrounded me as if a sign that I was a little gift sent from God, that my grandmother and my brother had sent me to watch over her. So every time I felt unworthy of this life, as if I had taken something that was not mine, I would remind myself - that it was selfish to throw away something that he would have given anything for. I created a version of him in my head, I told myself that he would have fulfilled this life and made the most of it. He would have had dark curly hair like mum, he would have been smart and good with numbers like dad, my father would have finally gotten to play football all day with his only son, he would finish high school and graduate university, have tons of friends and go on drunken boys holidays, be a player with the girls and probably break many hearts, and would finally get a grown up office job - working in property surveying, like dad always tried to force on us - eventually taking over the family property business, and would then settle down to marry a pretty girl and have 2 babies - a boy and a girl of his own. In my mind, he is real, he made them proud, he lived every dream he was meant to and made the most of the life he had, every opportunity given. So if he was born, I wouldn't have been here. But he wasn't, and now I am. So every time things get tough, and I feel like giving up, I just remind myself - that I am living in honour of my big brother. And that I best be sure not to waste the life he was meant for.