A Lesser Loss

I feel like my brother's death suddenly went from tragic to expected, like my right to cry and question God and wish and remember fondly is somehow revoked now that the doctor of death has handed down his verdict. Like people think my brother less worthy of the beautiful flowers we got for his funeral, less worthy of the volunteers who handled the services and the friends who held my hand. Or like they think if it had been their brother, they would have known that he had relapsed, would have stopped it somehow.

Or maybe I'm just condemning myself. After all, I'm educated in both worlds -- the academic world of the science of drug addiction, and the real world of drug-addled neighbors, friends, and family members. I have no excuse, really, not to know he was using, except that I seem to make it a point not to know much at all about my family. I am far too important to worry over little things like my brother killing himself day by day in his grungy apartment.

I have been floating along for so many weeks on a cushion of comfort, on this idea that these demons were behind him (though I knew the devil was not) and some other villain took him out of this world. A pharmaceutical company, perhaps, or negligent physicians. Cause unknown, I coached myself, reminded myself that this was a possibility, that once an addict, always an addict, either practicing or recovering, that recovery is a process and there are many dangerous slips along the road. But still, even as I cautioned myself to remember those days of gut-wrenching fear and all the wisdom they brought with them, still, I didn't really believe myself. I knew there must be some villain to be named in a dramatic revelation by Doctor Death that would absolve my brother of guilt, thus absolving me.

To be quite honest, I did not long for the revelation like the rest of my family did. I was content with the mystery, though I played at frustration over it, because part of me knew that there would be no revelation, no villain that I did not already know by heart. When my mother called to tell me that Doctor Death had handed down his verdict, I dragged my feet at calling her back. There was no urgency, unless it was to move in the opposite direction; I was not fooling myself.

I knew, and now there is no room left for denial. And yet, the hole in my heart is the same shape as ever. I do not wish any less that he were still here, I do not feel that he deserved it any more. He is not a statistic, one of those people, a sad story, he is not a lesser loss. He is my brother and he is dead.

Knowing

The final blow
and I breathe a breath I didn't know
I was holding,
folding creases in the pages
like these stages
can be filed away in alphabetical order,
under A for autopsy,
or maybe B for brother.

Such a stoic reception
for such a shattering confession:
deception in a resolute half-smile.
While all the while,
I tried to cope,
and all the while,
I tried to hope...
all the while,
it was that stupid dope.

What a terrible joke.

August 24, 2011

I thought I wanted to know. I thought I needed closure, that knowing what had taken my little brother out of my life would help me somehow accept the loss of him at only thirty years old. I thought if I had some concrete thing to point to and say, "This is the reason I can no longer visit my brother and pester him about cleaning his apartment/going back to school/getting his son back/taking better care of his health," then maybe I could file it all away under "D" for "Dead Brother" and go about my life as if it all made sense somehow. I really thought I wanted to know.

"It is my opinion that the cause of death was an accidental overdose of meth-amphetamines."

Now I know.

Packing

I'm packing your life into boxes
and stacking my grief on the floor,
with labels to give it some meaning
(then carry it all out the door):
letters you wrote to your lover,
pictures you saved of your son...
I'm sorting them into neat piles --
a cache of a life come undone.

I Wish

I wish I could see you again.
I wish I knew why I can't.
I wish I had known this was coming.
I wish I could cry more.
I wish I could dream of you every night.
I wish I could touch your face.
I wish you weren't dead.
I wish I had kept your son for you.
I wish I had been a better influence.
I wish I could rewind to all of my missed opportunities and recognize them.
I wish I had spent more time with you.
I wish I had known how to help you when you were sad.
I wish I had been more selfless.
I wish I could fast-forward to the next time we see each other.
I wish I could give your son his father back.
I wish I had more for your girlfriend than a box of ashes and a teddy bear.
I wish I could make up for the kindness that's missing from the world now.
I wish I could hold your hand.
I wish it had been me.

Dear C---

I love you. I miss you. I wish I could tell you all of the things I want you to know. I wish I could laugh with you one more time. I wish I weren't so selfish, that I hadn't felt so bothered when you called to talk, or needed attention. I wish I hadn't gone a whole year without talking to you and not even noticed. I wish I had never enticed you to smoke cigarettes or pot. I wish I had done more for you. I wish I had kept M--- here so you could have had more of a relationship with him. I wish everything.

I wish I could cry for you more. I wish I could do something about this. I wish I could fast-forward my life to the next time I see you again. I wish I could rewind our lives to whatever missed opportunities to help you I didn't see. I wish I knew what killed you. I wish it had been me instead. I wish I could give your son more time with you. I wish I could give I--- more than a box of ashes and a teddy bear. I wish Mom hadn't lost her only son. I wish I had spent more time with you. I wish you were here.

Ephemeral

I breathed you in
with cherry blossoms,
a too-short spring:
warmwet newness
and laughter bouncing
high and fast and
gone.

I sang you out into the night
among silver stars and moonlight
and you flickered and
faded
at the first sign of dawn.

I dreamed you
in a wisp of smoke and ash,
and the weight of it
fell down around my feet,
crushed in the trudging
everyday drum song.

Playacting

I'm working on working
on things that matter,
but as a matter of fact
it's only chatter:
noise to drown the violence
in the silence of this void.

I fake a smile,
make it laugh, then
quick as fast
I fill you in,
and grieve again,
can't breathe again
and I beg for sleep
to dream again.

I shut you out
and feign acceptance,
push you back
into the recess,
hold you high above my head
and breathe in everydayness.

The process doesn't fit my ache;
though you were never mine to take,
this letting go is only fake:
a break that's made to look like bending.
My hope and sadness keep on blending,
and this ocean's never-ending.

The ocean never ends
and my breaking never bends
and this smile's just pretend.

Algebra

I've worked the problem a few different times,
but the figures just don't fit together.
The answer should be six
or four
or two
but your absence leaves an odd number
and I can't isolate the variables.

You multiplied by zero and left me with nothing,
divided by zero and left me confused.
Even knowing that when it's all done,
the parentheses around you will be removed,
that you have not been subtracted from me forever,
I still wonder if anything greater than or equal to this sadness
has ever been felt before.

Yet nothing in an equation can disappear,
it can only be moved,
and as you have been subtracted from my present,
I know that you must be added back to my future.
So I'll continue working the formula,
trying to find order in these operations.
I'll keep my balance on all sides,
and I'll be ready for when it is time
for death to be solved
once and for all.

Eulogy

Dear C---,

First things first: there's gonna be mushy stuff in here, and for once you can't pretend not to like it. So there.

So, where does one begin writing a eulogy for their little brother? Certainly not in their thirties, that's for sure. You were supposed to be a crochety old man by the time I had to do this. No, better yet, I was supposed to be gone for at least two years by the time this ever needed writing, because I am supposed to be two years ahead of you at everything. I guess life had other plans...

I still wake up every morning and remind myself that you are gone, and then spend all day forgetting. Like, even writing this, I was trying to remember some of the names and dates and times that only you and I know, and I kept wanting to sign into messenger and ask you about them. But I had to remind myself that you're gonna be offline for awhile.

I keep flashing back to our teen years, to the days of running wild in the streets with you. Poor Mom, working sixty to eighty hour weeks, didn't have a prayer of keeping us tied down. We did some really funny stuff, some inconceivably stupid stuff, with the occasional flash of wisdom to keep us alive. I remember spending day after day in our kitchen with our equally wild friends, playing spades or dominoes, depending on the audience. Didn't matter which one we played, nobody could beat us. We had that middle-sibling mind-meld thing going; we didn't have to cheat to know the other person's hand. Remember when T--- got so excited that one time when he had the double five, just at the right moment, to pull his score up with ours? He slammed the domino down on the table so hard the table broke in half, and you told him, “My mom is gonna kick your ass!” He was a big, barrel-chested man, and Mom is all of 4'11”, but you fully believed it. Actually, I did, too. Actually, so did T---.

I'm really gonna miss the fun we used to have. I'm going to miss a lot of things while you're gone. Your eyebrows, for one, and the constant urge I always had to pluck them. Your laugh, your sense of humor, and your wit. Your utter inability to whisper in the movie theater. The fact that you always, always said just what you meant, just how you felt, with no prevarication or hesitation. The fact that you felt things more deeply than anyone really knew. And your scar tattoo. Like the scar on A---'s eye, it was my stamp of ownership on my little brother, a reminder of me that you could never escape. Proof of life, as it were.

Mom always used to get mad at us for fighting. She said when we got older we were all each other would have. She worried so much that we would grow up and be glad to be rid of each other. She didn't understand that arguing like that was all part of our bonding. I've known a lot of siblings, and I am so proud to say that not very many are as close as we have always been, fistfights, scars, and all.

But your sisters were not the only people you loved. Your son M--- was more important to you than breathing. I remember the day he was born, you came to my apartment, floating in a cloud of euphoria. “I'm a dad! I have a son!” you kept repeating, over and over again. You had this big, goofy smile stuck to your face like superglue. In the nearly twelve years since, I have never seen you as happy as that day. Love and families are complicated, and your little family is no exception, but there can be no doubt of the depth of your love for your son. My heart breaks for all of the moments you will miss with him.

You were a father, and you were also a son. Mothers and sons have this pure, uncomplicated relationship, in a way daughters can only envy. When you were little, you told Mom that you were gonna be an astronaut when you grew up, so you could give her a ride in your rocket ship. I remember thinking, when I heard that story as a snotty teenager, 'Hey – can you leave her on the moon on your way back down?' Whenever one of us would complain to you about Mom, if you thought we were being too hard on her, you would defend her. We love Mom, too, of course. Of course! But we are daughters. There is nothing like a son's love for his mother, and you were no exception.

Fathers and sons, on the other hand, are as complicated as mothers and daughters. Even so, it was clear that you and your father deeply loved each other. He called you, “Last word C---,” because you always found a way to have the last word. But today the words belong to him; he sent me his memories to share:

“Son, I remember the day, the hour, the minute you were born. I got to hold you only a minute after birth, and I don't think I took my eyes off you for the next four months. Even from the time you were little, you had a smile that could make a person laugh when they were down. With that smile, from 2 years to thirty, you knew how to use it to make a day better. There will never be a day in my life I will not think about you, remember you, and cry about you, my son.”

The wisdom goes that men who treat their mothers well also treat their women well. It's also said that men with sisters make better boyfriends. Ya know, cuz we train ya. I only know from the outside, of course, but I think your love with I--- has made the truth of that clear. You kept her sort of a secret for a while. I think you thought we wouldn't understand; people dismiss online relationships as not real, and I think that's probably true for a lot of people. But not you two. Only real love could have made you so happy. Only real love could pull you out of the darkness, out of the sadness that you sometimes fell into. You spent all of your days talking to your love, all of your nights dreaming of her. You wrote her poetry, sang her songs, even. You were doing everything you could to cross an entire ocean and pull her into your arms, and I know that if you had the chance, you would have made it. And I know that you two would have proven everyone wrong about how people fall in love, and how they stay that way. “I've never been so happy and sad at the same time,” you told her in one of your poems that you wrote her about the miles between you two. She felt the same. And she wanted me to read some words from her, so here goes:

“A few days after I met you, I asked you how you calm yourself when you know hard times are coming. You first joked about it; you said you drank milk, and I laughed. Then you told me the following words:

“Well, I've always been naturally calm, for the most part, and, ok, remember, two things have no purpose in life. First is regret, the second is worry. Neither does anything productive. So just believe in yourself and do the best you can. That's what I tell myself in hard times, that easier times will come, and hard times should be appreciated, because without them we wouldn't know what easy is.”

You always managed to find the bright side in everything. You were a strong, kind, selfless person. In fact, I had told you numerous times that I have never met anyone nearly as kind as you. I truly believe that your heart is made of gold, C---. You made a HUGE impact on my life. I don't think you ever knew how huge. Your words gave me strength and will continue to do so.

Sweetie, I will always love you and never forget you. I promise you. BUT! Just wait until it's my time to come there, too. I will hunt you down and kick your ass – yes, the one you used to shake on camera – for leaving so damn early. And remember, don't do anything I would do.”

I really think she means to do that.

You had this wonderful sense of adventure, little brother. You could find the funny in every situation. You didn't have much, but you would offer whatever you had to someone in need – a heart of gold, as Ifi said. You felt everything deeply – love, sadness, empathy, joy. You were a treasure of a person, and you will be desperately missed.

But I know I will see you again. The bible makes that promise at Acts 24:15, where it says, “and I have hope toward God...that there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.” If even the unrighteous will have a chance to live again, then I know, I believe with all of my cells, that I will see those eyebrows again someday. You believed that, too. We may not all agree in our family on how that is gonna happen, but one thing all of us are convinced of is that we WILL see you again. So, sleep sweet, my precious little brother. I will be there when you wake.

As the water rises up to overtake me,
I see you standing on the far shore,
waving me back to dry land.
It's not time for me to follow yet,
so I will watch the tides come in
all the days until you come back
with them.

(sung)

BROTHER GOODNIGHT,

SEE YOU SOON.

BROTHER GOODNIGHT,

BROTHER MOON.

Shock

I can't think of you sitting there
stopped
in your chair,
no breath in you,
no life there.
Can't think of you sitting there.

I can't think of us as three;
we are four,
we will always be.
I can't think of me without you --
you are part of me.

And I know there are those whose breath
was more tied to yours,
those with hopes and dreams
that you starred in,
those who gave breath to you
and those who you gave breath to,
and I understand that their grief must be
mountains next to mine,

but I can't contemplate a pain like that
when mine already cuts so deep
that I can't sleep
because I see you there
in your chair
offline;
and I can't dream
because I see your eyes
half open,
your hand bruised,
your life broken,
and the last words spoken
don't make sense.

I can't sleep,
I can't dream,
I can't breathe,
I can't believe.

Stages

Breathing cigarettes, and sweat,
and staleness,
contemplating paleness:
the light gone dim
(the shape of him
rescaled).
Captured fragments in this fabric
feel so final, few, and fine.
He is mine,
but only glimpses flashing past:
micro blasts of warm air
cooling quickly,
and they hit me harder every time.
If only I could look upon his face as he sleeps.
If only he could hold my hand as I weep.
If only I could bargain with these promises I keep.
If only death were mine to master.

The Seconds Since

The seconds
have grown larger
Since.
Used to be
I couldn't pick them up
with my bare hands;
they passed so fast
and I dashed
through the days
chasing them.
Now
I see them
with my naked eye.
They grow larger as I watch,
filling up with your absence,
crowding the breath from my chest,
pushing thoughts out of my head.
They pulse with the beat
that your heart no longer keeps,
wrap themselves around me
and hold me down,
pour cement into my belly,
lava in my chest.
They grow large and heavy
like an earth without gravity,
so that I float around
impotent
inside them.
They fill up with galaxies --
whole universes
stretched end to end
across forever,
and you are not
in any of them.

I Just Stood There Wishing

You looked like you were sleeping. I wanted to lay down next to you and put my arms around you. I wanted you to stand up and ask me what I was staring at. I wanted you to come home and ask where all your things had gotten to, and who on earth had vacuumed, to say that you liked your dust just where it was, thank you very much, and why would anyone throw away a perfectly good colander? I wanted to hear you cuss like you used to, tell me to butt out, light a cigarette and tell me you were gonna quit those d*mn things soon. I wanted to go home and sign into iChat and see you online, have a long conversation over webcam even though we live in the same city. Maybe we would fight about something stupid, or laugh about something stupid, or wax poetic for a second, because sometimes you did that, too.

?

Was I sleeping?
Stacking books in a box,
or sorting odds and ends?
Was I snoring,
fighting off the morning,
or was I bored,
eating sushi,
pouring a drink?
Was I standing by the sink
washing dishes,
wishing someone else would wash them?
Was I laughing at a silly joke,
or poking at the laundry pile?
Was it while I walked the dogs,
or swept the floor,
or before I woke,
even while I dreamed of you?
Maybe if I knew just when
and promised
never to do that thing again --
maybe then
I could hear you breathe
again.

Restless

My hands are flitting about
like little sparrows
looking for crumbs to peck.
My eyes dart around like
lizards,
purpose-seeking missiles
zeroing in on specks
of imaginary dust.
I have never been so restless,
but then
you have never been dead
before.

How I Grieve

I grieve
the same way I do everything:
analytically,
slicing open memories
to see what makes them tick.
Sorrow wells inside
swells in tides
and tries
to overtake me,
but I grieve
the same way I do everything,
so I wrap my mind around the tide
and force it back inside.

I grieve
the same way I do everything:
cheerfully,
finding bright spots
in dark corners.
I mourn you with laughter
instead of tears,
and though I fear I am not understood,
I know you would see the good
in bringing light to this darkness,
and anyway,
I do not know another way.

I grieve
the same way I do everything:
thoroughly,
unreservedly,
candidly and frankly.
There is not a thought
that I have caught
in this mangled web of sorrow
which I have held back
from scrutiny,
which I have not displayed
for outside eyes to see.
I don't know if those eyes
can see the same light as mine,
but this is all I know to be.

I grieve
the same way I do everything:
I put the pen to paper
and my fingers tell me how I feel.

Your Eyes

I saw your eyes today;
they were beautiful
and sad.
A little boy
who lost his dad
was looking up at me
through them.

I smiled for him
and held him as close
as a pre-teen boy would let
an almost-stranger,
said goodbye to him
like I was saying it to you.
See you soon, I said.
I'm here if you need me,
and I will come spend time with you
when I can.

And it was like you again,
like last time we talked
and I was busy and had to run
but I knew I could call you
any time.

So this time,
no vague empty promises
to call when I have extra time;
those are your eyes,
and the only time
I will ever have
is right now.

Untitled

I sat in your chair;
doesn't seem right that you weren't sitting there.
I watched a lizard crawl up a hot stone wall,
a stopstart slithering crawl,
and all I thought was,
"Why does his heart beat --
why does he crawl and breathe and eat
when you can't watch his lizardly feat?"

Read a poem you wrote --
it was beautiful.
It rhymed, but I didn't mind
(sometimes a person just needs to rhyme),
and I thought,
"That man loved with a passion I
don't ever remember having
so why is he gone
and I carry on?"

I can't look your memory in the face directly
yet,
I keep poking at the edges with my fingers
and pulling at little strings
to see what unravels,
but your smile is faded,
your laugh is muted,
and the shape of you is only approximate
in the gaps in my heart.

Someday I will refine the edges
so I can hold you just so,
but for now all I can think is,
I was not ready for you to go.

The Empty Air

I'm clawing at the air,
at that empty space where
you used to be.
I never looked too close, just always knew
that you were tucked away in your corner
for when I thought of you.
And I thought,
I came first, I will leave first,
so you will always be behind me,
all I have to do is turn around.
But you tricked me:
the air is empty there.
You are nowhere,
and I can't remember your voice
already.

When you were standing on the edge
of that evil precipice
daring me to look,
poised to jump,
or be pushed,
or slip and fall away from me,
I was ready for you,
ready for your game.
I held on to the air that held you,
because I knew one day
I would not see your face there.

But then you stepped away
from that Cliff,
you jumped back,
and I thought my days of looking back
were gone,
thought you would always be there --
as I came first,
I would go first,
and you would still be.

But somehow what I knew
was never true;
you are not you.
The air is still there,
but your breath is absent,
and I do not know where to look for you.