Because I'm the only employee here, I never take vacation. I'd go see my father for two or three weekends a year, flying out at night after work and getting home in time to open up the next week. I no longer went to NY to see friends, or anywhere else to see family.
When my brother was dying I got desperate and asked everyone and scored an overqualified substitute. He was available for when I went back again in August, so I took advantage of this and left for the month.
I went on the Tour de Family. My only performance enhancing drug was the daily nightcap. Which got a little cappier as the tour continued for reasons that will become self-evident.
But let me at least say this: whoever said War is Hell didn't have my family.
The Players.
My father. 84, retired white-collar executive, has four sons and one divorce. Very funny, very smart, doesn't understand me even a little. He often makes remarks about me getting a real job. And a real life. But he went a long way into trying to make up for an absolute horror-show of an upbringing, something we all suffer, stupidly.
His wife. Nice lady, they married after we'd all flown the coop. She's a little younger than he, amazingly nice, deep into the volunteer work, very active. (He's a homebody, as are all his sons - much to the consternation of all the spouses.) She is only a little bit overweight but takes insulin shots for pre-diabetes.
Oldest Brother. Corporate executive, the driest/funniest guy you'd ever meet. Unassuming, simple, smart as shit, made the old man proud. Died February 28. 2012.
His wife. The only person he should have married, they'd have gone the distance. College sweetheart, very civilized, very active, sporty, etc. To watch her with him through his dying was amazing. Very private with the emotions (sometimes I wish less so), she saw to him deftly with neither sigh nor complaint. It was really something to behold.
Their daughters, niece one and niece two. Great parents, both kids are smarter now than I ever was or will be. Different from each other, the older is more the sorority type though not at all stupid-like. The younger, still in school, is more into the artsy crap, music, movies, writing. Very serious, very concerned about every choice being the right one. Never sure she's having any fun, she once showed me a video parody her friends made of her walking with The Verve playing under it and she was laughing like I'd never seen her laugh and I was very happy for her and a little bit jealous.
Brother number two. Lives in Jersey. Three years older than I. This guy was just born backwards. He is everything the older brother was not. If he could have made a wrong choice, hung out with the wrong crowd, done the wrong thing, he was first in line. Drugs, alcohol we think past. Is married to wife #3. Has two daughters from a previous marriage that aren't in his life. But: like a big stupid dog, has the warmest, least judgmental, most open embrace of a stranger than all the rest of us standoffish, aloof WASPs combined. Recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
His wife. Nice girl, amazingly talented and prolific in the crafts department. Was heavy, got gastric bypass surgery, had many complications and follow up surgeries, gained all the weight back. They live in her childhood house.
Brother number three. I'm brilliant. Other days I'm a failed existence who watches too much TV and makes lots of mediocre art. I'm too lazy to stop either.
Brother number four. Lives out here, three years younger than I. My dad swears he's not his, but they have the same hands and feet. When we were kids we were good friends. In recent years he's barely talking to anyone. Neither drink nor drugs, he's active and fit. His moment of notoriety: during my brother's service he was sitting there texting. Everyone noticed, no one will shut up about it. He did not come to this event. PS. He takes care of his mother. Turns out she is also our mother, but no one has spoken to her in thirty years. I'm pretty sure she's still alive.
The Premise. We are a family politely out of touch with each other. Neither resentment nor ill feeling (bro four despises bro two and none of the three older brothers acknowledge their mother, but other than this), it was the option of survival: childhood was war, plain and simple. We stumbled out of it dazed, burned, lost, in shock. We had to find jobs, learn to live, pay rent, get dressed, have relationships. We had to learn to navigate a day every day. To leave each other alone was the best chance any of us would have to make it.
Brother number one was the most successful, the most able to put it behind him and navigate life, and for me this adds to my sorrow of his dying and to my anger at the gods of randomness. Everyone was dealt a bad hand in different ways, but he got robbed. I never spoke to him as an adult because I was so happy for and proud of him, leaving him alone was the greatest gift I could give him.
For a long weekend we would all descend onto my father's house (minus brother number four) early August in homage to my oldest brother. We were virtual fables to one another, bits and pieces of who we were when we walked away coupled with stories we'd hear via my father on how things progressed. But in the wake of my brother's passing, the one thing we were all arriving with was a renewed sense of family. Well, of a possible sense of family. A sense of hope that something like a family could be salvaged from the passing of its exemplar.
chapter 3.