My younger brother and I had always eaten together-3 times a day 7 days a week-before life became complicated. We had our very own kiddie table as we were only 19 months apart, while our older brother was seven years older than me. Up to a certain age we would share the same table, which would eventually evolve into an actual table, as our parents watched the news. We would have covert missions where I would slip him my meat, and he would constantly give me his vegetables. I would also warn him if Mom tried to pull one over on us and put God forsaken mushrooms in the meatloaf. But one thing that we both adored to eat was Death By Chocolate ice cream pie.

I had (and still have) an unhealthy love for chocolate, chocolate anything to be exact. My brother even coined me as the “chocoholic.” These infatuations developed when we were older and were allowed to watch TV while we ate. Some would argue that this would disconnect us but it only made us closer. With me finishing middle school, and Jay just entering it-high school would drive us apart more than the TV. We loved all the same 20th century cop shows and I would still eat his vegetables while he ate my meat. But this was an era without the dreaded parental supervision to impede our missions. One night, our Mom brought us our favorite chocolate ice cream pie-I was overjoyed. You see, we aren’t allowed to have ice cream every day, it’s not healthy, so when our overlords granted us “ice cream privileges” it was a big deal and Jonathan and I would celebrate with a Netflix movie. My brother and I dove into our pies while we watched TV- and we always stayed up late-or rather I did, he was always a lightweight when it came to late night movies. I usually finished the movie alone, but dinner, and cake, was the consistent thing that brought us together. Little did we know that Mom was right-it was unhealthy, at least for one of us.

This I thought as Jonathan lay in a hospital bed with a fever. His cheeks were turning reddish, and considering his dark complexion-this was troubling. He didn’t speak much as we watched the Fairly Odd Parents and my Mom was off calling my father. He was falling asleep as the medicine they gave him took effect.  It turns out that Jonathan has Crohns Disease, and this makes him intolerant to chocolate. So intolerant, that, God forbid, if he eats enough chocolate, spicy foods, or anything else that he is allergic too, he could potentially lose a section of his intestines. A piece of him would be gone, and we only know this because the 13 year old boy had a slice of “Death By Chocolate” ice cream cake with his chocoholic sister. The very thing that had him and I watching Adam-12 or Dragnet deep into the night-landed him in the hospital.

I pulled out a chocolate bar, with granola (I had gone on a health kick), and thought “better him than me, he liked vanilla anyways.” Besides, nothing had changed, it was not a very deadly disease if he watched what he ate and always knew the ingredients of his food. He had to be responsible, speak up, and always be knowledgeable of his surroundings and food. Considering that this is my little brother we are talking about-there’s no wonder that I was and am a little bit worried. From our years at the kiddie table together I know that the boy hates mushrooms, yet he would eat them if my mom hid them well enough in a meatloaf- and he would be blatantly unaware of what he consumed. In fact, he would be reminded of this again when he ate spicy foods for the first time since his diagnosis-bad move.

Yet now I notice that it was just me and the TV as he slept; nothing had really changed, luckily he hadn’t changed-but I knew that soon he would have to.