The Ornaments

My brother died in September.  I haven't written much about it because .... well .... I still am not entirely sure what to say.  In one of the few moments in my life, words fail me.  I've lost family members before.  Four grandparents, both parents, two grandparents-in-law.  All of those were kind of expected.  My dad was surprising in the moment.  He hadn't given any indication that he was going to die soon, but he also had a history of heart attacks and all other kinds of infirmities.  My mom had cancer and had been telling me she was dying for over 30 years.  The grandparents all were older and having health issues.  They all hurt - loss always hurts in so many ways.  But this... this was something completely different.

Chris was 50.  He shouldn't be gone.  This is the guy who was always moving and playing and working.  He worked outdoors at a landscape supply company.  His job included moving huge trees and bags of mulch and other massive things that people use in yards that I don't know about because I know nothing about yards.  He surfed and biked and played basketball and played football and -- he played everything.  He worked out.  This constant physical activity was at the crux of our faceoffs for so many years.  He was all about outside; I was all about inside.  We would play football and basketball together, but as I got older I wanted to stay inside more and more.

Chris and I had a difficult relationship.  We were brothers, but we were very different people.  There was always the usual sibling rivalry present, exacerbated by my insane need to compete with everything he did (academically - I conceded sports as a whole to him).  He liked the Redskins; I liked the Cowboys.  He liked the Lakers; I liked the Hawks (TBS 17 Baby!).  He liked the Expos; I liked the Yankees.  The only sport entity we agreed on at ALL was the University of Georgia: I rooted for them throughout my childhood and he got his doctorate there. Yeah, all of that was there.  But there always seemed to be something more entrenched - something that neither of us had any control over.  We seemed to be pitted against each other by our parents.  My behavior was held up to Chris as how he should be acting.  His work ethic was held up to me to show me what level of effort I should give.  The struggles he went through in his life would be repeated to me to show me that I "had it easier" than he did.  My willingness to comply with requests (or my ability to be manipulated - still not sure on that) would be held up to Chris when he complained about doing things.  As a result, we both resented each other.  He hated that I was overweight.  I hated that he pointed it out all the time.

We didn't stay close.  We both tried at different times to rekindle a relationship, but it never lasted long.  There were things done and said that caused deep wounds.  He lived far away for many years, so visits were rare.  I kept myself distant from him for other years to try to protect myself and my family.  He battled his demons, especially alcohol.  And he lost more and more often.  And my heart broke over and over again.  This strong man.  This brilliant and strapping physical specimen who could not be defeated by anything.  He kept on losing. All we could do was to watch it happen, try to reach out, try to encourage him.

In July, I got a phone call from him while I was at a baseball game.  I couldn't answer because it was loud and it was 742 degrees and I was melting.  He called back twice and then we texted.  He wanted to come up to Columbia to see us.  He was planning on taking a vacation for the first time in decades and was thinking about going to North Carolina.  I told him the next weekend wouldn't work, but two weeks later would.  We texted about it a couple of times, and I asked him to not drink while he was at our house.  He said fine.  A week or so went by and I texted him again and asked if he was still coming up that weekend to see us.  "What is this weekend and why would I be coming to see you?"  I was kind of shocked, since we had just talked a few days before.  I didn't know at that point he was already in some serious trouble.  Within a couple of days he was in the hospital.  After a couple of weeks he was discharged to my Aunt and Uncle's care, but he was a poor facsimile of my brother.  He ended up back in the hospital pretty quickly and never left.

I tried to get down to see him, but it seemed like things were stacked against it.  School was starting, work was super busy, hurricanes were threatening to slam into the coast.  I would call and talk to  him when I could.  I left voice mails.  We would text each other - often via my Aunt's capable fingers instead of his failing ones.  And I planned to come the third week of September.  However, my sister Holly went down to see him and called me.  "You need to get down here now."  I saw him on FaceTime and was not prepared at all.  He was yellow and OOOOLD looking.  He wasn't really coherent at all.  When I hung up, I completely lost it.  I wailed and wailed.  This couldn't be real, but it was.  During the crying I was texting and emailing work, getting out of commitments and moving things around.  My in-laws headed to the house to stay with the kids.  Heather got out of work.  And we headed to West Palm Beach as fast as possible.  We ended up getting into town after midnight and went straight to the hospital.  They sent us up to the Hospice floor and the nurse met us at the door and said, "I'm so sorry."  I nodded and thanked her.  She said, "I just went in there and he is gone."  I was confused.  They moved him?  Why would they move him?  They didn't tell me that downstairs.  Heather, thankfully, was clear-minded and got clarification.  Then it hit me.  "Wait.  He's dead?"  The nurse nodded.  I walked to the door and looked in.

I missed him.  I didn't get to say goodbye.  I didn't get to hug him.  I was too late.  I should have left earlier.  I should have driven down during the hurricane earlier in the month.  Guilt and pain and grief just crushed me from every direction.  What was laying in that bed wasn't my brother.  It couldn't be.  I walked in and looked at him.  He looked like a horrible prop from a cheap movie.  He was yellow and waxy and cold.  Bloated with white hair and this weird mustache.  He hadn't had a mustache by itself since high school in the 1980s when people thought mustaches looked good.  He had a goatee for years.  He had been clean shaven for the last decade or two.  I collapsed into a chair and held his hand.  Then I laid across his chest and just cried and cried.  I told him I was sorry I didn't get there earlier.  And I tried to process what was going on.

Chris was gone.  My brilliant, gifted, athletic, strong brother.  The one I constantly pursued, the one I desperately needed approval from.  He was gone.  He had lived far away from me for over 30 years, so I was used to him not being around.  But he was gone.  How in the world? We were five years apart, and it felt like more than that most of the time.  But this was my brother.  I was so proud of all he had accomplished.  He had a doctorate in Bioinorganic Chemistry.  He worked for NASA's Astrobiology unit.  He worked on some iron-sulfur bond as part of his studies.  There were three components to it and he had divvied up the components with his collaborators.  He had the final component and finished his work first.  Then he went ahead and completed both of the other pieces also.  (I don't understand all of what that meant. Not a science person.)  He presented at an International Conference in Germany.  He was one of the most gifted artists I had ever seen.  There wasn't an art style he couldn't master.  Well, I don't know if he sculpted ever.  He would have been a great sculptor.  He was a true athlete - mastering any sport he played.  But at the most basic level, he was my brother... my first friend.

We shared a room for over 12 years, until he went away to college and basically stopped coming back very often.  We would mess around and irritate each other.  We would laugh at stupid stuff we said to each other.  We would not go to sleep after we were supposed to.  Even though we were so so different, we still were able to connect over silliness.  We could always get each other laughing.  I had this 8x10 picture of myself as a baby hanging on our wall.  (Hey, I was cute.  Don't judge me.)  We were siting in our room one day and he kept messing with the picture.  I said something about him pretending to pick my nose in the pic.  Then I said, "Ha.  You should put a booger on it."  SO HE DID!  He picked a booger and put it on baby David's upper lip.  "GET THAT OFF OF THERE!"  He cleaned it off, but it took some of the color with it.  Forever the picture was blemished with the reminder of that fateful day.

Chris used to listen to music Holly and I couldn't listen to due to our ages.  He was always worried I would tattle on him if I heard him singing some song that he was singing that wasn't appropriate.  I have no idea where he got this idea.  I wasn't a tattle-tale.  (Looking around for the lightning bolt.)  So he used to change the lyrics to try to convince me that I wasn't hearing what I was really hearing.  So, Dire Straits were bemoaning that singers would get "their money for nothing, and their checks for free" - not chicks.  The Police's Roxanne was not about a prostitute.  Rather it was about a street.  "Roxanne Street.  You don't have to put on the red light."  (You could wonder why I knew what a red light stood for when I was that young, and how my mom felt that was okay.  We had a house down the next block over that had a red light in the carport.  My dad made a comment, my mom explained, elementary aged kid now knew about red light districts.)  Panama by Van Halen, which is LOADED with double entendre, was merely about a guy driving around and nothing more.  The best music interaction came one morning when he was walking around singing and getting ready.  "WHOA.  She's beautiful!" It wasn't time for me to be awake for school yet, but I was usually awakened by his singing anyway.  This time I called out in my most lady-like voice, "Thaaaaa-aaaanks."  He stopped walking and said, "Uh ...  you're welcome?"  Then he tried to figure out who said it.  "Holly?  Holly?  Did you say that?"  He went into her room and WOKE HER UP (this was getting better and better) and asked again.  She, of course, denied it because she had no idea what was going on.  I couldn't hold it in any more and busted out laughing.  He came in our room.  "That was YOU?"  I think he hit me with a pillow.

What made me finally get around to sharing?  It is the holidays and Chris' death interacted with a sad tradition I have.  The year my dad died, my mom gave me a red ornament with gold printing on it of a postal stamp that had a deer on it.  It was sold as a tie in with the Christmas stamps from 1999.  My dad had been a postal worker for most of his adult life.  That was the only job I knew him doing, despite him having many many others when he was younger.  So I started hanging the ornament on the tree.  As the kids grew up and started doing more with the ornaments, they would never hang that one.  That was mine to put up.  It usually led to reminiscing and sharing about Dad, who none of them had ever met (even Heather).  The ornament fell and broke a few years back, but I found a replacement on eBay and it slipped right into the role.  The year my mom died, I tried to find an ornament that could serve as her memorial on the tree.  I saw one at Hallmark, but it had sold out when I went to get it.  So I took one of her bottle glass suncatchers with a grapes on it and hung it next to my dad's ornament.  This year, I needed to now find one for Chris.  I looked at surfer ones and fisherman ones.  But none of those felt right.  In my darker moments, I thought about buying an alcohol bottle to put up there - they even had them at Belk.  But, as my counselor said, that would be funny for one year and then be painful.  One day in the car, my brilliant insightful daughter said, "You should get a Swiss Cake Roll."  I looked at her and said, "Nailed it."

My brother, like most teenagers, didn't like doing things that my mom asked him to do.  The one exception was running to the grocery store. I was a dorky kid and actually liked going to the grocery store.  I went just about every Saturday morning with my mom until I went to college.  I also was an annoying punk little kid and wanted to go hang out with Chris in the car.  Finally my mom told him  he had to take me.  We drove to Publix and went inside.  We were walking around and grabbing the things on the list.  Then he said, "And a box of Swiss Cake Rolls."  I had a sneaky suspicion that wasn't right.  "Is that on the list?!?"  "No."  "Then what are you doing?"  He stopped and huffed.  "Every time mom tells me to go to the store, I buy a box of Swiss Cake Rolls as well."  I stared at him flabbergasted.  "What does she say?"  "She doesn't know."  "What about the receipt?"  "It doesn't list items, just prices."  "How do you get them in the house?"  "I eat them in the car."  "She would see the box and wrappers."  "I throw them away in the outside garbage on the way in the house."  I was completely baffled.  What deception!  What brilliance!  He then said, "You can have some of them if you don't say anything."  Deal.  So we ate a box of Swiss Cake Rolls on the way home and threw the trash away in the outside can.  And we repeated this many times afterwards.  And when I became the one to run to the store?  I did the exact same thing.  Even when I was in college, I would find myself buying a box of Swiss Cake Rolls at the store.  I cannot even see the product any more without thinking of Chris.  So it was a PERFECT ornament.

Christmas is one of those days that is so filled with emotion on its own.  It becomes so much more on the first year after you lose someone or on an anniversary of the loss.  This year will definitely bring thoughts of Chris.  My sister and her son are coming to spend Christmas with us - the remaining two from our family.  I have lots of fond memories of Chris on this holiday.  For years, he would get a Whitman's Sampler as a present.  Sometimes he would let us have the pieces he didn't like.  For a couple of years, my mom would give him a box of Frosted Wheat.  We weren't allowed to eat sugary cereal (only to dump a spoonful of sugar into our non-sweetened varieties).  Chris loved the frosted version of the horrible haybale Shredded Wheat.  This was back before mini-wheats were a thing.  Once a year she would give him a box of the frosted treasures.  One year we all swapped names betwixt us and had $100 to spend, but we had to get something out of four categories: something to wear, something to eat, something to play, and something from a hobby.  I had Chris' name.  He had owned a dive watch for a long time and really loved it.  It had been beat up and had the strap changed several times - once from laying on top of a lit kerosene heater.  But it had finally given up the ghost.  So I planned to get him a new watch.  I had to be super creative.  So I got him a springform pan for making cheesecakes, a box of cheesecake mix (which I don't think he ever lowered himself to use), and a bar of surfboard wax.  The rest I spent on a new dive watch.  It wasn't exactly what he had, but he wore it for decades.

I miss my brother.  Sweep away all the anger and confusion and hurt and sadness.  I miss him.  I've missed him for a long time, but now I know it is a permanent loss.  I'm glad that I have memories of him.  Some are physical, like his paintings and fishing poles and surfboard.  Some are mental, like Swiss Cake Rolls and his brilliant mind and his constant singing.  Every time I pass the Little Debbie end cap.  Every time my kid leaves an empty cup in the living room.  Every time I put a booger on a baby picture.  Every time I hear someone talking about bioinorganic chemistry.  Every time I see a surfboard.  Every time I pass my Christmas tree.



NOTE: This isn't to be cheesy and schmaltzy.  Take time this holiday to hold those you love a little closer.  You really don't know what tomorrow holds. Last Christmas, I had no indication that Chris wouldn't be here this holiday.  And if someone in your world is struggling with substance abuse, depression, loneliness - PLEASE don't blow it off.  You may be the voice that they are relying on to keep going.