Zach was more than a brother to me; he was my best friend. Zach was 6'0" with brown hair and brown eyes. He was sixteen and drove a white Supra. As an athlete Zach could play pretty much every sport and was named on the All county Tennis Team. Zach and I shared the same interest in girls, sports, and friends.

On July 12, 1993, I was attending baseball camping and my back was hurting, so I went to the doctor. The doctor discovered that I had mono. For three days I laid in bed, so I didn't see very much of Zach. Then on July 16, I decided to get out of bed and try to regain all my strength so I could have some friends over. It was 4:10 in the afternoon and one of my friends from my old neighborhood called. He asked me questions about Zach. I was puzzled because I thought it was rather strange for him to call me and ask me weird questions. I passed it off as boredom.

Then two hours later at 6:15; my doorbell rang. I got up and looked out my garage window to see who it was. There was a Gwinnett County Police car in the driveway. I started to get very scared because I thought Zach had done something stupid and been caught. I looked out the window in the door and saw two men standing there. One was in a policeman's uniform and one was in a suit with a badge with a blue cross in the middle of it. Somewhat nervous, I answered the door.

The policeman asked, "Does Zach Jones live here?" I answered "Yes". He said "Could you call your mother". So I shrugged and called upstairs to my mom to come down. She got halfway down, saw the chaplain, sat down, and started crying. I was so scared. Then the policeman said, "Your brother has been in a car accident". The chaplain then said, "Zach has been killed".

I was numb. I responded in the only way I could think of. "Where and how did he die?" "He hit a tree going about 50mph on Wydella Road in front of Round Tree subdivision," the chaplain replied.

"That's our old neighborhood," I said incoherently. While the policeman was telling me how he died, my mom was screaming my brothers name like he was upstairs, but he could not hear her. All that kept going through my head was, "Zach's not dead, he is still swimming at the neighborhood pool." The policeman told me to call my mom's best friend in the neighborhood, but I didn't have enough energy because I had bee so sick that week and I was so upset, so I gave the number to the policeman and he called her. After he got off the phone, I called my dad at work. He started yelling and screaming in the phone as if the policeman were lying to him. After they hung up my dad came rushing home. By this time all of my neighbors of my street were at my house. I felt like a stranger walking though a maze.

By about 7:15 there were about 175 people at my house. It was so chaotic, yet I remained detached. I was in shock so badly that I didn't have enough energy to cry, so I comforted all the people that were crying. One of the people at my house was Casey Crowder, he was my brother's best friend. Casey looked so lost every time I saw him. I felt so bad because I wanted to do something, but there was nothing I could do because I felt so empty.

The day of the funeral was the hardest day of my life. I hated knowing that my big brother was just about to go into the ground forever. Zach's funeral was the first funeral I had ever attended. Finally, that day I was able to cry. Even though Zach in not visible he is still my big brother. Zach was always a great person, so he left me great memories, like the memories of the time we played sports together, went on vacation together, and just hung out together. That's the whole point-----together. Maybe that's why I'm writing this story, because when I write about Zach we can still be together.