I spent the summer with my baby brother.

(Granted, he's not technically a baby. But he is 17 months younger than me, so I can get away with calling him that.)

In his brief return to his home state of New Jersey, which lasted about three months, we spent a lot of time together. After years of living separate lives, lucky if we saw each other twice a year, we were in each other's company almost daily -- just like we were growing up.

It was funny how quickly things fell back into the comfortable pattern of familiarity, and likability, that existed between us from the moment we first became siblings.

He got me hooked on Xbox video games. We spent countless hours in front of the boob tube, battling one another for control of the joystick and title as king of road rage in "Burnout 3: Takedown."

I introduced him to my love of movies -- and, by direct association, my intense interest in politics -- all through a little film called "Fahrenheit 9/11." After years of expressing little to no interest in the subject, my brother was finally hooked. He watched all or part of every presidential debate, and, in turn, engaged me in multiple conversations on them.

We laughed till our sides hurt through every roller-coaster ride at Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom. We rocked out together at a Velvet Revolver concert.

We squabbled in front of our parents at the dinner table, referring to one another by the silly, made-up names my brother's always had a talent for inventing. We visited with my friends and colleagues, and I always felt proud when introducing him as simply "David, my brother."

But now he's gone.

Not dead, thank goodness, nor shipped off to fight a war in some faraway place. No, my brother has taken the adage "Go west, young man" quite literally.

After many years of trying to make himself a home in New Jersey -- and a few more in Maryland -- he's gone to Colorado, a place he's never seen, save for books and postcards. He packed up a few precious possessions, including his two cats, and moved more than 2,000 miles away from us, the only family he's got.

It's not like I hadn't known about his desire to move away. For years he'd been vocal about not being happy living in the Garden State. Its closeness to the city and shore, cosmopolitan feel and myriad of cultural offerings held little appeal for my brother, who countered with the negatives: too crowded, too much traffic, the landscape too flat. He longed for hills and mountains and wide-open spaces; all, unfortunately, things New Jersey could never give him.

That, however, didn't make the finality of his leaving any easier on me, or our parents. I'll be honest: It was very hard watching him go, and each of us had his own trouble dealing with that empty place at the family dinner table.

It was on those occasions that I felt a tinge of regret over spending the summer with him. After all, if I hadn't, saying goodbye would've been a whole lot easier.

But then I realized most people are lucky to get one "summer" with their siblings -- a time when they really connect with one another. Maybe it's when they're little kids, like my brother and I were, close in age and each other's best playmate. Others, I'm sure, don't really bond until they grow up and have families of their own. And some, sadly, never get that summer at all.

I suppose, then, I lucked out ... because I got two.