My name is Tyson Gerald, and my twin brother died.

Nathaniel, my twin, who I called Nat or Nattier, was never what you'd call the strongest person in the world. When he was fourteen, he stopped eating breakfast, and then other meals. I was the only one really noticing, and I was terrified. I asked him what was wrong, and he said that it was nothing, and that he had been eating when he got home from school (I have basketball practice after school, and he was home alone for two hours a day).

After about a week, I noticed that he had lost a whole lot of weight. I mean a lot, in just one little week. Nat had been through a stage in life where he was depressed. It was actually worse than most teenage cases of depression.

When he was thirteen, I caught him just before he killed himself. Our parents sent him to therapy, and he got better, but the fact that he was not eating made me scared that he was depressed again. I was very, very wrong.

One morning, I woke up because my stomach hurt a little bit. Now, my brother and I feel each other's pain sometimes, but I thought that the pain was mine, not his. It was getting really late, and Nat hadn't woken up, so I tried to shake him. He said that his stomach hurt so bad he didn't want to get up.

I told my parents that he was sick and was not going to school, and I went off. I skipped practice and went home to see if he was okay. I was with him for a few minutes, and then he started to throw up blood.

I called an ambulance, and right after I did, Nat passed out from weakness after throwing up half his stomach. When the doctor said that he had stomach cancer, and it had progressed very far in his body, I was crushed.

My parents paid for chemo instantly. Nattie didn't take the chemo very well. After the first few days, he landed himself in the ICU with a really bad fever. On the third time in the ICU, the doctors said that he wasn't expected to live.

They also said that if he did, he couldn't go back on chemo because his immune system was proving to be very weak.

I was with him when he died. God almighty, I don't even want to think about how sick he looked. Sweating and trembling and all that.

He just died. I don't want to get into our last conversation, or what I had said to him while he was sick. He died, though. Dead. Gone.

Tyson Gerald

San Francisco, California