Brother Goodbyes 6   Recently updated !

My birthday falls on a Wednesday this year, hump-day for Monday through Friday  9-5ers. The weather they say will be an excellent Spring Day. My patio is in bloom with flowers, herbs, lemons as fruit and blossoms. So much to be thankful for. Family offering a surfeit of love and friends too, arms and hearts open to me. But this birthday will be different from any I have had from the time I wailed into the world until now. This, you see, is my first birthday without a big brother and it will bring a particular kind of loneliness in the space his leaving created.

My brother was my only sibling.  I entered the world becoming the fourth leg of a table that included my mother, father, and older brother. My brother and I were close.  From the time I was brought home from the hospital

through the time I suffered through a divorce from a terrifying marriage as I was entering my seventh decade he was my protector and supporter. 

I loved having an older brother, especially one so incredibly smart, so talented, so loving, so generous, and up to his last breath so handsome.  When our father died the table wobbled. When my mother died, my brother and I had to find a way to balance with only we two. And now I stand alone my arms holding up a tabletop of memory, some dream like in their enduring sweetness and some harsh and caustic  but all forming the soil from which we grew.

You rarely never know when it will be the last time you are going to be with, laugh with, cry with, enjoy a relative or friend.  Even if that person is in hospice and death is near there still is that space of not knowing the day, the hour. My father, who had left his worn shell of a body days before his heart stopped beating, became non-responsive on a Saturday  after I had stopped by on the previous Friday to let him know I was on my way down the coast but would be back Sunday.  That day became our last smile day, last days of words and cheek to cheek kisses. It was unexpected too, not his dying, he was after all in a hospice facility, but the timing was unexpected.

Last December I had every intention of seeing a friend and artist colleague before he took his harmonies and rhythmic chord changes  into his next life journey.  So many people wanted to see him that a scheduling chart was established. I made a Monday noon reservation on the list.  I could have come on Sunday, but Monday seemed fine.  He had been in hospice only a week.  He died Sunday evening. No space left for in person offerings of love, that one more memory shared, those moments of gratitude for the crossing of our artistic paths and the family friendship that grew from it.  Because in the end, at the end, you rarely know, precisely know, when someone is leaving.

And so it was with my brother when he died last week, jarring and unexpected, despite his advanced Parkinson’s Disease status. Perhaps it was because of the fall he had taken the evening before hitting his head and moving towards his bedroom in a stumbling haze.  Perhaps he rolled over onto his belly, arm awkward beneath him and simply couldn’t get enough air.  Maybe his heart just stopped because it had completed the number of allocated beats.  I’ll never know.  But what is sure is that he died three weeks before my birthday. Neil Tyson DeGrasse says that when the body is cremated your body turns to heat and then that heat emerges from a chimney as infrared heat and those light photons start traveling, like all light does, infinitely through our universe. My brother was cremated a few days after his death, and if astrophysicist DeGrasse’s science is true my brother’s light is quite far from here. 

Our last goodbye was in my home the Saturday before the Sunday when he died.  I had prepared lunch for him and his wife. I cooked a shrimp quiche with cheddar/gruyere cheese and my own butter rich crust, a tossed salad with a mélange of raw veggies hiding under and perching on top of the mixed green lettuce leaves and some store bought cheesecake.  I was so happy when he asked for seconds. I gave him coffee with his cheesecake and although weak and off-balance his smiles told me he was glad to be there.  It was a pleasant afternoon although one of those days when he was not completely clear, his brain was covered with that hazy curtain which sometimes fell. A curtain that seemed to keep thickening absorbing his thoughts making it difficult to get ideas from brain to lips to ear.  Still, he was glad to see and hug his grandnephew and laugh with his oldest grandniece, not quite clear which granddaughter of mine she was.  That afternoon was a gift.  And I am ever thankful, ever grateful for that gift. But when we briefly hugged goodbye that afternoon, I didn’t know that it would be our last goodbye and had no expectation that on this birthday I would not receive his happy birthday sis phone call.

A few poems with him playing a part in the inspiration:

king thoughts

1.

“king me”

my brother said

then bored by

the simplicity of checkers

he tried to teach me chess

“don’t worry about the king

the queen has all the power”

but he soon tired

of my unwillingness

to sacrifice the pawns

and use my knights effectively

2.

king size beds are good to play in but

hard to find affordable sheets to cover

3.

king size sodas good to share

in a family of six

with ample dental benefits

and no predilection towards diabetes

4.

chicken ala

5.

king tut was a boy

who followed

the directions of self-serving

men who wanted to be

but never truly were

kings

6.

king kong, a tragic primate

of questionable ancestry born

from the brain of a man

who hated and feared black

but acknowledged a king size heart

inside that gorilla frame

that could be killed

but not controlled

7.

a king for children the elephant barbar

lives well in understated colors and tightly

drawn doodles by heavily taxing

his subjects who he rules with an ivory tusk

8.

king henry the 8th was a murderer

of women impotent in his madness

and king leopold of belgium

a despot taking limbs and lives of congolese

who before leopold ruled

breathed song with their mornings

instead of axe, blood and severed arms

9.

the king of spades is always trumped by an ace

and can be easily beguiled by the queen of hearts

if she knows when and how to play her cards

10.

the king of the road

has never been the king of rock

who must concede his title

to the king of soul who gave him

a corner on the platform

already shared

with the king of blues

10 a.

(there is no king of jazz

anarchy and democracy

rule improvisation

around chord changes)

11.

and as for martin luther

he was no king

a seer for some

prophet for others

a man whose heart contained the world

but he wore no crown

no crown of thorns

no crown of gold

only a dream painted

in multitudes of colors

stitched with prayers

which were always a call to action

12.

“king me,”

my brother said

and I placed a rounded checker

black against black

upon his piece

“king me,” he said

and I did

again

and again

devorah major

Haiti Photographer

my brother was struck by lightening, lifted up

carried from camera and rock to tree, closer to the falls

sacred waters thundered down the mountainside

as the people sang praise and promise to Damballah

carried from camera and rock to tree, closer to the falls

he looked with different eyes, forever changed

as the people sang praise and promise to Damballah

he was given fire blessing or a curse that would devour

he looked with different eyes, forever changed

his lens of experience shattered and reshaped

filled with fire blessing or a curse that would devour

seared with the truth of miracles’ inevitable scars

with his lens of experience shattered and reshaped

magic unused mushroomed inside his soul

seared with the truth of miracles’ inevitable scars

leaving tremors and trembles, stumbling footsteps

magic unused mushroomed inside his soul

while sacred waters thundered down the mountainside

leaving tremors and trembles, stumbling footsteps

my brother was struck by lightning, lifted up

end stage Parkinson’s

my brother’s brain is fire

wired and paced

the trembling leaves

which were his fingers

have turned to iron

and he to a tumbler

of burning polished rocks

falling falling falling

without lifting his feet

he stumbles and lips split

forehead is cleaved open

stitched and restitched

he has lost his jokes

of corn and syrup

that chuckled out

sun washed afternoons

and now splinters canes

enraged at being trapped

in limbs that don’t obey

and a mind screeching of demons

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