When I was younger I had a best friend named Dylan. We did everything together back then too. Dylan was tall with sandy blonde curly messy hair and the deepest blue eyes you had ever seen with freckles that littered his fair skin. Dylan taught me how to surf and hit on girls. He was there for me when I broke my arm and even when I had my first heartbreak. We joke about how one day I would be living with him and his pretty wife one day and kept thinking about what the future would hold for us together. Then that dreadful day came when Dylan got really sick and started to miss school a lot. Everyone knew that he was dying but I didn’t want to believe it for a second. Dylan had always been the strongest person I knew and looked up too since he was a year older then me but there he was. Laying in pain in a hospital bed looking paler than usual with the life drained from his once excited blue eyes.

I would go to visit him a lot after school or really any chance I got. I guess part of me hoping that he would get better if I kept seeing him but he never did. He always just got sicker and sicker until the day finally came where he passed away. Derek was diagnosed with cancer during our 3rd year of high school and died our senior year right before graduation. I winced at the memory of Dylan when I picked up the note book and blew the dust off it. Mary was right next to me excited to see what I had drawn for her this time. I gently opened the pages of the old book scared that if I moved to fast they would ripp and kept going like this until I found him. The drawing I had made of Dylan the last time I saw him healthy and smiling but still looking at the drawing all I could see were the same dead eyes from that day. I hadn’t realized it but I was crying over the drawing as Mary cheered excited to have a big brother of her own until she looked over at me. “Daddy why are you crying? Do you not like the drawing?” She asked me getting my attention. I quickly wiped my eyes and hugged her. “No not at all sweetly its nothing you need to worry about.”