“He’s gone.” The words came to my cell phone with a firmness that hit the back of my throat. It was Thanksgiving and my older brother, the fast-talking bodybuilder, the guy with the quick wit, the family man who always laughed, had left us. After contracting the short straw and type 1 diabetes at age 11, he beat the odds at every juncture. But he couldn’t get past 2020.
They say that siblings are your first friends, your link to the past and the bridge to the future. As I received the news of my brother’s death, I was drinking water, drowning in the last words and lost moments. I couldn’t find air. I ran outside. I couldn’t call. All humans within earshot were homebound by state mandate. There would be no shoulder to cry on, no comforting hugs. There would be no ‘sorry’ and no back rubs. It was a cold turkey duel on Thanksgiving.
Chris had just texted us the day before to tell us that our uncle had died. Uncle Michael was larger than life. He was a mountain of a wisecracking man who taught us how to water ski and cheat at cards. And within 48 hours, we would lose Uncle Robert to COVID-19.
It was hard to imagine: three family members in four days. It was too much in a year that had already been too much. Six degrees of separation, seven degrees of isolation, 6 feet for 15 minutes in a 24-hour period: our kingdom for a mask.
It was a year in which we stood on the edge of existence and stared into the abyss, each with our own version of the bottomless pit. Death became a hashtag, life became a meme, and surviving became the highlight of a cyber feed. We all lived under the net and over the rainbow, except for the zooms, the hangouts, and the CGI crowds, manifestations of life that we could no longer have.
I found a picture of my brother as a little boy in red shorts and suspenders. Another as a smiling teenager in front of a Christmas tree in the back room of the house we left thirty years ago. He strikes a pose on a weekend home from college. He leans against his first car in cut-off jeans; his eyes are so clear that they seem to look into eternity.
There’s a photo of us sitting in front of pumpkins at a local farm store circa 1970. I remember that day well. He didn’t want to sit next to me. Typical fights between brothers. My mother asked him to come closer. He said no. He had a jawbreaker stuck in his cheek. He had just finished a cherry one that was all over my lips. He was wearing my mustard yellow stirrup pants and cashmere coat. I was in his herringbone sweater. I walked away from him disinterestedly. I was tough, little one. He made me like this. My mother pointed at her manual-focus Canon camera with the folding fan flash, the shutter popped, and the moment was frozen in time. What I would give to get close to him now, to not have turned my back on him that day, to have taken that space between us in my 8-year-old hands and kept it forever.
The drive from Los Angeles to Phoenix for my brother’s “Celebration of Life” was long and lonely. It would be outdoors, masked and around a table of framed photos. It was the best we could do. At a rest stop somewhere between Indio and Blythe, I yelled into the desert in existential protest for everything I’d lost. The place was desolate except for a large saguaro cactus guarding the picnic area. It was a huge columnar tree. He had seen his share of weary commuters and truckers. It had survived the roar of the freeway, the fumes, and the blazingly hot waterless seasons. Their pleated spines and tough hide were a welcome challenge in a world of harsh indifference.
My mom always said that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, but she was giving me too much all at once. As I drove through the dune-backed moonscape, my mind went back to the comfortable rooms and soft furnishings, snowmen and seashells, bugs and barbecues, stick ball and Halloween, banana seats and minor leagues.
I still have my brother’s number on my cell phone. Keep smiling from her Facebook page. Its big, bold, and purposeful life lives on in a contiguous block of fixed-length virtual memory. Technology is cruel in that sense: a cybernetic counterfeit, a digital ruse. Just like the “social” distance that has kept us apart.
There are no repeats forever. There is no stillness after the curtain falls. We don’t get a second chance for a last goodbye. So when this big kidnapping is over, shake hands, bump your fists and high five. Hug everyone you care about and never let them go. Say ‘I love you’ every waking moment, and never again let physical distance come between you and your family.