February 28, 2012, is the day my brother died. Now, I'm a lot like a moron, so I can't tell you any given event on any given day 365, including my birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas; but I seem to know the day my brother died.
Once upon a time I was a broke and pathetic introvert minus cable, computer, and cell phone. I sat in my crappy one-room apartment passing the night with vodka and many, many reruns of Criminal Minds on free TV. I watched them all.
Then one day at LAX I got on a plane to say goodbye to my dying brother. Across the aisle from me that day was an unremarkable blond who was chatting it up with her seatmate and in so doing telling him she'd recently filmed an episode of Criminal Minds. I was instantly curious. But in the two months that followed - it took my brother two months to die, death is a scheduling bitch - I'd missed many weeks of my favorite show so remained curious about this blond and her episode. It took more than a year of trying to figure out the timing of his death, the episodes being re-ran on Ion, and trying to remember what that girl looked like - she was not very tall and had a specific nose. Finally one night I think I got it, I think I saw it. She was murdered.
But before all this, I got on the plane at LAX. It would be the first time I'd seen my brother since the cancer returned and no warning could, would, prepare me for this, him, so close to death. He has two daughters, and the one who picked me up at the train station most gratefully put me at ease by referring to him as "Auschwitz Dad." This is no PC disconsideration, merely a dark and beautiful gene that runs the veins of us all.
Christ, he WAS Auschwitz Dad. I didn't know it that day, but he was within two weeks of dying.
I was there four days. I was the first in a series of familial visits. My father would follow me, then two more brothers. In the end, only my father's visit followed.
The daughter, my niece: we'd fallen into a conversation about, well, not just Criminal Minda but, specifically Gideon. Because if you were there from the beginning, you would know this show was really about Gideon's redemption. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mandy Patinkin bailed on the show, but his character's pathos was mesmerizing, or was it Mandy's pathos? It WAS the show.
Eventually the character Emily Prentiss would appear and over time you would realize this was a fantastically FIERCE woman. But in the beginning she was just an agent in search of buy-in, and that episode, Lessons Learned, would be a favorite, a gentle moment of two great characters earning each others respect.
In this episode, en route to Guantanamo, Reid and Gideon are playing chess. I don't know why the genius Reid can't master chess, but nonetheless. Before they can finish their match the plane takes a sudden sharp turn, the "Gitmo Twist." It wipes out the board and the game. In protest Reid claims, "I was winning!" Prentiss responds, "Actually, he would have had you in three." This is Prentiss's defining moment, and at the end of the show, after Reid fails chess again, Gideon acknowledges the newcomer.
"Prentiss?"
"Sir?"
"You play?"
"Yes, sir, I play."
Fucking fantastic, if you're a loser into this sort of thing. I am exactly such a loser.
The next morning, by the time I'd gotten up, my niece had already gone to the library and checked out the disc with this episode on it for us to watch that evening. I know, right! Fucking amazing kid.
A bed had been moved into my brother's office, a small room just off the den. It was around 8 o'clock each evening that his wife would help him through his end-of-day procedure with stunning soft diligence. We would all remain in the den to watch whatever the fare was that night. Eventually I would be the only one awake, and I would stare at a listless TV listening to my brother sleep.
The DVD went in before 8 p.m. that night, and watching it were my niece and me, and my brother who came to sit next to me. He sat next to me on the short couch and he was engaged, he was following along, and the hour passed. We watched another episode and an hour passed. My brother was still there, engaged, wide awake. It was getting on to 10 o'clock. My sister-in-law would occasionally come in to ask him if he wanted to go to bed, and each time he said no. Around 10, though, she was getting impatient. He wasn't going anywhere.
And this is where I know something: sitting next to me was a dying man who was a little boy and who wanted to stay up all night with the grown-ups and who did not want to go to bed. Ever. My brother wanted to STAY.
And this is where I regret something: I did not take his hand.
We were a family respectfully distant, and in this moment I did not know what to appease, my instinct or his process. That is my flaw, (one of many), that very sentence. Because when your brother is dying you don't weigh instinct against process, asshole, you take his fucking hand, for chrissake. It is my eternal regret.
Today is February 28. Not every February 28 will be a dreadful ode to my brother. It's just that earlier this week, still a broke and pathetic introvert minus cable,
computer, and cell phone, I was sitting in my crappy one-room apartment passing
the night with vodka and reruns of Criminal Minds on free
TV, and the episode run was "Lessons Learned."
chapter 3.