Remembering My Brother

​My brother Al, my only sibling, died on March 22, 2017.  His death, ending a life whose quality declined dramatically a few weeks earlier, was not unexpected.  Today,  after speaking at his memorial service where I felt remarkably composed, I’m convulsed by an inexplicable grief sweeping through my body.

Our relationship was complicated but it was like no other in either of our lives.  Al was the only person who knew my parents and others in our small family as I did.  We were close enough in age to know each other’s friends.  And Colusa, California, where we grew up, was small enough that we knew our parents’ friends, too.


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In February I spent parts of three days with Al at The Cottages at Clear Lake in Houston, Texas.  Together we reminisced about our lives growing up in Colusa at 549 Parkhill Street, in a white clapboard cottage-style house fronted by a large elm tree.  In the backyard, behind a cedar fence, a garden of roses -- Peace and other varieties -- opened onto a lawn large enough for a good game of croquet and a patio with a Ping-Pong table and a grill.  We spent many evenings as a family in the backyard, the two of us often trying to best our father who was a champion croquet and Ping-Pong player.

Al was a bright little boy.  He amazed me, my parents and grandparents plus an uncle of two when, at the age of six, he recited from memory that well known poem, “A Visit from St.Nicholas” or “Twas the Night Before Christmas” – all 56 lines. 

Al harbored a special feeling about Christmas – the magic of Christmas – especially when he was an adult with young children.  I remember being with his family in Virginia Beach one Christmas Eve.  After the children were sent to bed, the adults feverishly assembled a dollhouse and train set and wrapped last-minute stocking stuffers.  Happily exhausted, we dropped into bed only to be awakened at 3 a.m. by the sound of sleigh bells.  Al was on the roof jingling bells, signaling that Santa was in the ‘hood.  And the next morning, proof of Santa’s visit was on display for all to see.
Summer vacations often found us driving north to Oregon to visit our grandparents.  Both sets lived on farms.  Orchards of cherry trees and a few filbert trees covered the hills of my mother’s parents’ farm outside Salem, Oregon.  Eager to make a few pennies of our own, Al and I would join the hired hands, carefully picking Bing and other kinds of cherries – with the stems on -- filling one or more boxes over the course of a morning.
  
We usually visited my father’s parents in Mist, Oregon – on the Nehalem River -- during hay-baling season.  Al and I were too young to bale hay but not too young to wander down to the creek that ran behind the cow pasture where we’d catch crayfish.   After delivering a catch to our grandmother, we’d walk about a mile to the General Store to stock up on black licorice.  Until the General Store burned to the ground about ten years ago, it was the oldest continuously running business in the state of Oregon.  Memories of those days with my brother -- catching crayfish, collecting eggs from under the hens in the henhouse, picking wild blackberries, hovering nearby while our father milked a cow, squirting sudsy warm milk into our hand-held cups, and playing hide-and-seek among the bales of hay in the barn – feel still-fresh.  It was a simpler time, no electronic distractions.

Before moving to 549 Parkhill Street in Colusa, we lived outside Colusa on a ranch, in a large house my parents rented.  One day Al and I were riding new bicycles, exploring dirt and gravel roadways when we spotted a cluster of buildings.  One looked abandoned, with a lot of dirt-stained windows.  I don’t know what possessed us to toss rocks at those windows but we didn’t stop until we’d broken all twenty!  We didn’t say a word to anyone.  But a couple of weeks later, the owner of the ranch paid a visit to our parents – how he knew Al and I were the culprits, I’ll never know.  We received a strong verbal reprimand from our father and a lesson we both learned:  Don’t mess with other people’s property, even an abandoned chicken house!

Like my father, Al was a big tease, and I was an easy target.  Sometimes I’d get so upset, I’d run to my parents to complain.  “Shirley, just consider the source,” was their usual response.  With my parents’ lack of empathy and Al’s continuing teasing, I made a deliberate effort to develop a thicker skin.  And then one day sweet revenge flew into my life:  Well after midnight, an owl trapped in the attic of the old ranch house found an opening into my brother’s bedroom.  Sounds of the owl flying into walls mingled with the terrified screams of my brother, woke the rest of us.  From that moment on, whenever the spirit moved me, I would simply mimic the sounds of a hooting owl and enjoy seeing my brother visibly wince.
  
Al loved all the pets he ever had, and he collected a lot of them – from gerbils and hamsters to lizards, including a special chameleon.  One Saturday while Al was away, I heard a shriek from his bedroom.  Running in, I found the house cleaner Rosetta trembling, her eyes riveted on a green curtain above Al’s bed.  Staring back at us was a freshly dusted green chameleon. When Al heard the story, his concern was not for Rosetta but for the health of his chameleon.

My brother had a palette for good-tasting food, not gourmet or healthful but good-tasting.  He flew from Houston to northern Virginia to help my husband and me move from one house into another.  The morning after the big move, I had nothing to serve anyone for breakfast.  Al suggested we go to McDonald’s.  On this visit to McDonald’s, my first fast-food experience, Al introduced me to an Egg McMuffin.  Delicious!  On a trip to Houston, Al took me out for breakfast where he introduced me to biscuits and gravy, “a Texas specialty,” he said.

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​At the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Al was deemed a “marksman” for which he received a gun, a revolver.  Ironically, he may have been a marksman but he was no hunter.  Although a carnivore, he told me he felt guilty about eating meat.  “So, eat fish!”  I said.  “I even feel guilty about eating shrimp,” he replied.   Like me, he expressed a vegetarian sentiment but never made the leap.

While a cadet at the Coast Guard academy, Al visited me at Vassar where he got into a heated discussion with one of my bright roommates about the ramifications of some historical event.  He said he loved it because he didn’t often have many opportunities for such discussions at the academy.  I’d hoped he would go to a liberal arts college and study law but that was my dream, not his.

And then there were the girls.  My college roommate Ann remembers Al as “drop-dead gorgeous.”  She told me her sister had a crush on him for years.  I heard this about him from other females but to me he was simply my brother.
  
In later years we didn’t see much of each other, but we did have some long phone conversations.  His memory for family incidents was far keener than mine.  “Don’t you remember that, Shir?” he’d say.  And when I didn’t, he’d happily fill in the gaps. 
During these conversations he delighted in sharing some bit of new information he’d gleaned from watching the Discovery channel or relating the plot of a movie recently seen.  One of his favorite actors was Matt Damon.  I think he’d seen all of his movies.

Al surprised me sometimes.  Two years after the death of my first husband, I called Al to tell him I was re-marrying, someone he’d never met.  “Do you want me to give you away?” he asked.  I laughed.   At my age I figured I didn’t need to be given away.  But Al and his wife Nancy flew from Houston to Virginia for the wedding where he did, in fact, give me away.
   
Five years ago, I sent Al the first draft of my memoir – he was in it and I wanted his reaction.  Two weeks later, he called:  “Shir, your memoir is going to be a success.  Nancy agrees.” 
 
“I hope you’re right,” I said,  “but I have a lot of rewriting to do, and once that’s done, I have to find an agent and a publisher.”

​My memoir was published five weeks before Al died.  And while he will live on in my memoir and in my heart, I grieve because I've lost a visible and irreplaceable bridge to our shared past.

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