From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
Over the course of his young life, Ben Breedlove's heart gave out on four occasions. The first time he was just 4, but he remembered it clearly. "There was this big bright light above me. I can't even describe how peaceful it was," the teen from Austin, Texas, described in a Dec. 18 YouTube video. The last time was on Christmas Day. Just a week after posting the seven-minute video, he succumbed to a heart attack brought on by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle that he had suffered his entire life.

Within days of his death, the high school senior's moving video, This Is My Story, told entirely on handwritten notecards, went viral, gleaning nearly 4 million hits. A frequent YouTube poster with two personal channels, unbeknownst to friends and family, he'd put the clip on a new page. Sister Ally, 19, didn't see it until Christmas night, after friends found it and reposted it on Facebook. "I went on Facebook at 4 in the morning, and it was everywhere," she says. Dad Shawn, 52, and mom Deanne, 49, "were brought to tears seeing their son again," she adds. A happy-go-lucky prankster with a "legion of female admirers," his family said, Breedlove lived life to the fullest, wakeboarding in the summer and constantly tinkering with his video camera. But privately he suffered, enduring dangerous periodic blackouts that kept him from playing sports with friends. In May 2009 he had a pacemaker implanted; recently doctors discussed the possibility of a heart transplant. A second brush with death came last summer, when his heart stopped during tonsil surgery. "My mom and sis were waiting in the waiting room," he recalled in the video, "and a chaplain walked in and said, 'We need to pray.'"

Keeping a brave face after the scare, "Ben didn't want anyone to be sad for him," says friend Grant Hamill, 18. Still looking to the future, the pair planned to go skydiving after graduation. Even so, Breedlove seemed prepared for whatever came next, "always telling us he was going to be all right," adds Hamill. On Dec. 6 he went into cardiac arrest at school and experienced his final vision. This time it featured his favorite rapper, Kid Cudi, and the soundtrack of Cudi's "Mr. Rager." As lyrics played-"When will the fantasy end/When will the heaven begin"-he "had that same feeling" as he did when he was 4. In his video, he says, "I was proud of MYSELF, of my entire life, everything I have done." On the last two flashcards, he asked, "Do you believe in angels?" then replied, "I do." Though still recovering from the Dec. 6 bout, he felt fine on Christmas morning, opening gifts and winning the family's annual Christmas Monopoly game-a first, says Ally. But later that day, while filming Jake, 12, jumping on his new trampoline, he lay down on the grass and never woke up. In the days following his death, thousands paid tribute, including Kid Cudi, who called Breedlove a "real hero."

On Dec. 29 more than 1,500 mourners gathered at his funeral at Austin's Gateway Church. Despite their heartbreak, Breedlove's family believes he was truly ready to say goodbye. "Ben told us of the peace he experienced and how he wanted to go back to that place," says his sister.

The video, they believe, was his way of helping them get over the pain of the end he may have felt was coming. Says Ally: "He left it there for us to find-his way of leaving us with something we'd need."