photo by https://unsplash.com/photos/a-couple-of-people-standing-on-top-of-a-mountain-38Ee4JwmhrI
I never had a real brother.
As a kid, I watched other boys wrestle with their siblings, fight over toys, share secrets, break windows together, and cover for each other afterward.
My cousins — the ones from my aunt and uncle — were around only in bits and pieces of childhood. After life took its toll and the family tree thinned out with losses, even those rare visits faded into silence.
But somewhere along the way, life sent me the other brother —
not by blood, not by name,
but by everything that actually matters.
He showed up first in the loudest parts of youth —
in those wild summer nights when we were more energy than wisdom.
He was the guy who laughed even when jokes weren’t funny,
who carried me home once when I fell asleep on a park bench hugging a bag of chips like sacred treasure.
And yes — he’s the same one who once tried to impress a girl by jumping over a ditch…and landed straight into it.
(We still mention it every time he starts acting too smart.)
Years passed, the noise settled, but he didn’t go anywhere.
When I called him at midnight with a random question about the Peak platform — he answered.
When I wondered if Bitcoin would rise or fall — he argued like a half-asleep Wall Street prophet.
When the house needed to be clad — six hundred square meters of climbing, hammering, sweating —the other brother was at the very top of the scaffolding near the roof, working for free, as if it was his own home.
When my son was born, he celebrated so hard that he fell asleep drunk in the ditch in front of my house.
We didn’t wake him —it felt like a strange kind of blessing, a welcome, a charm.
And when my mother passed away,
and the silence in the house felt heavier than gravity,
there he was —speaking to us with a gentleness that didn’t belong to him,as if for a moment someone else was speaking through him,
guiding us,guarding us.
When the ambulance rushed me to the hospital,he appeared instantly, materializing beside me like some universal soldier —
calm, steady, with that look that said everything would be fine
even when nothing felt fine at all.
Birthdays or funerals.
A beer in an unknown direction.
Big questions or stupid ones.
Debt he never asked to be returned.
Strength he never bragged about.
Heart bigger than his chest could carry.
Everyone should have one like that.
But there is only one.
One other brother.