By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

It always hits hardest in July. The 7th was his birthday and the 22nd is the day he died. This summer, Matthew would have been 38 and attending his 20th high school reunion if things had been mountainously different – monumentally better.

But I learned a long time ago to stop questioning why Matt died. Well, most of the time. There are still nights I add up all the seemingly insignificant things that had to happen to put us at the heinous Sundowner Lounge on Old Shell Road that night. The stupid $5 accelerator cable on my old VW Bug breaking as I was driving past that spot. Matt deciding abruptly to drive the 50 miles or so over to Mobile to hang out at a friend’s house. Me calling that friend for help and finding out he was there. All of us deciding to stay at the bar and drink too much.

There was Matt attempting to cross the road and me grabbing him by the collar before he ran out in front of a westbound car. I let him go, saying “Be careful.” And then there was the truck coming the other way that just had to be there at the right moment to hit him as he tried to bolt across Old Shell.

I still remember the sound and my own voice screaming, and running to try to do something – something I couldn’t possibly have done. There were the two young men who got him breathing again, delaying the inevitable. And there was that horrible call to my parents to tell them my little brother and their precious son had been very badly hurt. I pray it will always remain the worst phone call of my life.

We gathered in St. Joseph’s Chapel a few days later to say goodbye. I honestly can’t remember much about the service, except thinking that one of the three people I couldn’t remember not knowing was in the coffin I helped carry. We all did get one big smile when we carried Matt out to a Jimi Hendrix song played on an old “jambox.” In my mind, it was “Little Wing,” but I’m really not sure. I just know Matt would have liked the idea of Hendrix’s guitar wailing inside Spring Hill’s church. The priests didn’t, but I know Matt did. He’d had so many good times at the school.

Looking at this, I realize it is a maudlin remembrance of my brother’s death, and my own feelings about the experience. But it doesn’t say much about Matt. Sometimes I think after 17 years, maybe I’ve lost him. Sometimes it is hard to remember the little details about growing up with him. A lifetime of things crowd my mind, and I sometimes fear Matt will slip out of my ears onto the floor and be gone forever.

But then there are those quiet times when I can still feel him sleeping in his bed across the room from mine, or spending all the hours making each other laugh as only brothers can. I think about us jumping in our beds late at night until my dad roared into the room bed-headed and in his “tight whites” to catch us. Of course we’d pretend to be asleep and eventually he would leave and we’d start jumping again. Our dad would step out of the closet and flip on the lights only to catch one of us in mid-air. Whichever one of us it was would always pretend to be asleep immediately, as if some sort of new fabric softener had made our sheets so delightfully springy that sleeping children were being hurled toward the ceiling. It didn’t work.

I’m embarrassed to myself about the sometimes cruel treatment he endured from his big brother. Certainly I teased him too much. But I’m proud of the many times I stuck up for him, or just flat-out kicked someone’s butt for messing with Matt. I’m saddened remembering Matt pedaling for all he was worth to try to keep up with my friends and me as we laughed and raced away on our bicycles to ditch my kid brother.

When I try, I can almost feel us playing tennis, bowling together and spending hours fishing. Just seeing a bunch of old silver dollars recently sent me into a full-blown nostalgia for the times Matt and I spent god-knows-how-much of our childhoods practicing to be future lady’s men by coin collecting. (What? Chicks don’t dig coin collectors? Next you’ll tell me stamp collectors don’t get constant female attention.) That coin collection is still one of my most treasured possessions, simply because Matt helped me put it together.

It’s funny that as the older brother, I usually remember him in the position of following my lead. Probably just because, as my mother always says, “he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.” But Matt got me interested in some of the things I’m still doing today. Only after he bought a guitar and started making ungodly racket with it, did I follow suit. And though I’ve never gotten really good, I managed to convince a couple of guys who are good to let me into their band.

Matt was the first journalist in our family, too. Long before newspapers ever caught my eye, Matt was editor of the Gautier, Miss. Jr. High newspaper, stirring up the administration with a political cartoon featuring a talking toilet named John C. Crapper. What a brilliant concept! Sounds like something we’d run in Lagniappe.

As I finish this up, I’m smiling writing about my little brother, and maybe that’s all I really wanted from this – to remember his brilliance, humor and love. Sometimes it’s too easy in July to think about his death and all the things he never got to do and to burn with regret over what I didn’t do or say. It’s nice to sit and reflect and to know I still miss him – and that he is still very much with me.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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