A Smile Says It All

Seeing my brother smile was a gift. It's not that he was a particularly unhappy person, but his true smile was sort of a rarity. I swear that smile lit up, when he was laughing or playing with his dogs. He never smiled in pictures. This made him look like a rather grumpy person, but he had a heart as big as he was. He was the kind of person who only smiled when he really meant it; there were no plastic, painted-on smiles. That's why my brother's smile was so special. He only gave it to you if he really meant it.
Just like his displays of affection toward his family. If he called you a turd, it definitely meant you gave his life meaning. "I love you" wasn't spoken everyday. There was the occasional bear hug, but his love was mostly apparent in other ways. It was the way he ruffled my hair when he passed me or made fun of me that I knew he cared. He always had a picture of me and Rachel in his house, on a cabinet or wall. According to some of his close friends, he talked about us quite a bit. He always had a "mess with my little sisters and I'll mess with you" mentality about my friends, especially guy friends. He called me Mocha, and my sister Macchiato. That was the greatest term of endearment to ever be directed to me. Every time I visited him in the hospital, I told him I loved him. No matter how many times a day that was, I said it. Even if I knew he couldn't hear me, I said it. Sometimes he'd be conscious and he'd nod. Once, he tried to respond. He struggled to form the three words with his tongue and lips. No sound would come out of his mouth, so he had to settle for the silent exclamation. I always held his hand when he would lay in that hospital bed. When I'd finally let go, his hand, though strapped to the bed for safety, would squirm in attempts to reestablish his grip in mine.
I loved him dearly, and I knew he loved me.

I was thinking about that smile of his, how it was rare. How it was something to be treasured.
I was generally a happy person, and I could zap on a smile at any given moment, no matter what emotions where lurking beneath the surface. How often, really, was that smile fake and superficial? How often did it really have meaning, really hold value? That was a question to which I had no answer. The frequent and rather annoying sympathy I got from everybody was often accompanied by a phrase of optimism like, "keep smiling," or "hold your head up high." But what did smiling matter if it wasn't genuine? Why should I hold my head up high when on the inside my heart was a shambled, broken mess? And more importantly, when would I finally start smiling from the heart once again?