“My Dad is the most talented man that I know,” his daughter lovingly expressed on a family Zoom call. As a teenager, he was “hanging ten” on his skateboard and surfboard before Tony Hawk made skateboarding a thing.

He was a serious skateboarder. He placed in the top three in two categories in one of the first official skateboard tournaments he entered. His competition may have come from as far as the renowned birthplace of modern skateboarding, Dogtown, California. After his standout performance, he was set on becoming a professional skateboarder. He and his friends talked excitedly about entering skateboard and surfing tournaments all over the states and all the way to South America. But just as he seemed destined for glory, one evening, he took a routine skateboarder’s tumble. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that he landed on his board and suffered a compound fracture to his right leg.

Alone, scared, middle school age, no cell phone, I could not easily relayed the news to my parents. It was the late seventies. They were on a trip to Mexico with all the kids who lived in the household, apart from him and me. I called my sister, the second eldest sibling, who lived nearby, using the yellow rotary wall telephone in the hallway. In the morning, we went to see him at the hospital and found him in the emergency ward on a gurney, medicated, waiting his turn to be mended. That experience came to my mind, as I thought about him in the intensive care unit, in a coma, connected to a ventilator, between life and death, because of COVID.

Reflecting about how he ordered his skateboard, wheels, knee pads, shorts, elbow pads, helmet, Vans, and Ocean Pacific (OP) three-fourth length-sleeve t-shirts from a skateboard magazine, I tried to move away from the painful hospital images. Half a decade younger than he, when I had grown enough to fit into his clothes, I would wear his OP t-shirts. To me, he was like a character out of a coming-of-age movie. The cut, dark, handsome, high-spirited one that everybody likes. As adults, we saw the world differently; but then —as a shy, introverted kid— I wanted to be him. The epitome of cool.

The daily updates on his dire medical condition underlined published reports that 1 in 680 Latino Americans who contract COVID-19 have died. I wondered if he was that one and whether the loss of another piece of our multipiece family puzzle was imminent.

After my parents died, I began to liken the impact death has on a family to how missing pieces affect a heart-shaped jigsaw puzzle. No matter how many times the puzzle is put together, if pieces are missing, the heart will always be incomplete. For a family, the loss of a loved one, like the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, create a pervasive sense of emptiness that can never be filled.

The skateboard injury was a life-altering experience. Not long after his leg healed, he married and began to focus all his energy on creating a family. Other than the lingering urge he sometimes voiced to grab his surfboard and go catch the waves every time a tropical storm or hurricane was nearing the Gulf coast, he moved on. Committed to raising eight children into adulthood, he never looked back or expressed any regrets.

In the last several years, aside from working, he was writing songs and performing at open-mic nights at various places. His singing style was greatly influenced by classic 1970’s rock bands, from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Bad Company. That is the music that played on his 8-track as he drove his younger brothers, including me, to school. I do not think I will ever be able to listen to songs like “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” and “Shooting Star” without feeling overwhelming grief.

He passed away approximately three weeks after being diagnosed with COVID-19 in the period of year where the gloom of winter gives way to the hope of spring and a rebirth begins for everything under the sun. I was on my daily walk when I received the call, listening to music he liked. Despite preparing for a moment one fears is coming and thinking about it in the best possible way, there is really nothing that can be done to lessens the heartache when hearing the phrase, “He is gone.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been traumatized by COVID-19, including the families of daring, fearless, cheerful dreamers like my brother.