On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

I feel you so constantly since your transformation, hovering around me; sharing with me, from your place behind the screens, all the tangible experiences of my continuation – smiling with me at an inside joke, hearing the phrases I speak into my still rooms, and seeing all the things I know. Even now, when we come close to the point where the globe will have made its full orbit, and arrived at that place, that portal through which you relieved yourself of life by your own hands, I can still quickly be reduced to tears. Some memory brings it on, or a song that I have known you to love, or the thought of something that you confided you yearned for but, alas, were never destined to have. There is no way for me to reconcile your loss.

As children we might have suspected that something compelling was upon us. While we talked and studied the overhead sequins from our veranda rails, we were so connected. We would later discern the way of the Divine; delicate and undetectable, like individual strands of hair, but part of the larger design still. Twenty years will come in just this same way and go, and I will be stunned to have survived it without your company; to not have succumbed to my initial instincts to follow you into the next realm – that is, if the universe even allows such longevity. For your leaving has convinced me that our time is as fragile as daylight, ready to be claimed by the slightest shadow, but unpredictable overall. Just look at our Grandmother, who, we were once both certain would light our way into the next world. She has lived three of your lifetimes and now doubles her prayers for you by the bed.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We might be coming closer to terms with the truth; that you have stayed here for just as long as you were meant to. The air that moves around us has heard us declare it regularly; we’ve repeated it like a line that must be learned, and now we’re digesting it.

We came, like a band of thieves, back to the grounds for the first time since the interment, desperately searching out your name along the rows of bronze, feeling short of time. We scanned over crosses and praying hands with the map flapping like a flag in the wind; and then, the exclamation came.

We paused, each one of us, to watch the woman clasp her hands. She cried out in jubilation or exaltation or perhaps relief or grief or all. She was the first to discover you all over again, just like in your beginning and just like at your end. The company murmured that there was no mistake in it.

We made a chain of clutching hands and whimpered as an elder prayed over the letters that form your name. The woman knelt down to place a wreath against the metal and touched the plaque with both of her hands; the garlands were designed in some of your favorite colors and we heard her thanking the maker for having given you to us.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We gathered your clothes finally, your mother and I, to put them away or give them away. We loitered at the door for a period before entering your space. It is still your space although you’ve withdrawn. It feels like you. Your things are all arranged in the way only you would have them; the cocoa butter lotion in a big bottle on the shelf next to loose pennies and dimes, a watch, some cologne, an empty potato chip can toppled over, and DVDs in a row overlooking stacks of books. Your shirts and jackets hang like museum pieces: garments that were once worn and kept warm, but now hallowed artifacts after the sudden relinquishment. I ran my hands over the material.

We attempted to work with ears willed deaf to emotion and folded each piece after careful consideration. The woman was standing at the foot of the bed slowly buttoning shirts, gently folding slacks and quietly pairing socks. She sighed every once in a while. I remained silent as I handed her bunches from the piles that surrounded me on the center of your bed. I thought you may be watching from behind the veils between dimensions, and hoped you would appreciate the reverence with which we worked. We loved you so. I crawled across the floor and assembled your shoes. I placed them all in a bag. Who could have dared fathom life would bring us to this?

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

The woman sits in the armchair alone quite regularly now. She takes many of her meals there. She looks at the television as if she can see through it clear to the other side, with the sounds and colors carrying on unnoticed. Maybe she is remembering overseeing some stage of your development, with a sensation that cannot be imagined or described. She attempts to recover herself whenever someone walks into the room.

We speak about you often and in bewilderment still, shaking our heads to complete our sentences; and from somewhere in the viscera, a grunt would come.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

Because you altered the state of the whole universe by going, I will continue to write about you. Somewhere, in some atmosphere, a cluster of stones have modified their trajectory. Here, my complete consciousness has been realigned. You have gone from us; you have abandoned the only manner in which we knew you, and left me alone in our once common struggle to live a life of meaning.

I did not know it was possible to sink any deeper into a shroud of malaise. I started the process even before your departure. The thing inside that sees all things must have been alerted, but I was in the dark. I think of us with no more than twelve years between us, lying on the bed and imagining our time twenty years into the future – we lived to see it. We made it to that place after doing battle in series, trudging through unfamiliar territory, and mastering life in what the powers have termed as the inner city.

We used the best of what we could muster and persisted. We persisted. For even in the many days where I was certain I would fall dead from the strain, you shouldered me and pulled me along. We met the trials of the young men coming of age in our environment like twin apprentices training for a warrior’s title. We held conference on the concrete rails of those Crown Heights stoops, knowing that the adults in the house could not possibly comprehend our strife, nor would we have wanted them to. They had their collective and individual troubles to manage, so we made do with our own; trouble in the yard after school had let out; trouble behind the sliding subway car doors; trouble in the pack of sneakers trailing after us down the block; trouble in the path leading past the project walls; trouble at the edge of the stick-up kid’s knife, trouble through the bullet holes covering the backboard in the park. Like twin apprentices training for a warrior’s title, we met those trials coming of age in our environment. We used the best of what we could muster and persisted. We persisted. My beloved brother, If only for the legacy you have left with me, what volumes of significance your existence has had!

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

And finally you speak – you speak in a dream; no more sitting silently by, gazing in a daze as we all surround you, interrogating you; no more stealing up to the bedside in my sleep within sleep to slip rolled dollar bills underneath my pillow. Words! Words spoken from your voice; and shining from your eyes is that same familiarity and affection. Oh, how I miss you and cry for you in many quiet spaces. We that have remained, console one another, feeling perhaps, that our own individual loss of you is the deepest, as selfish as the thought may be. We have known you, you see, and we feel entitled. But now you speak. This is the thing that the mystics articulate, sermonizing according to their respective affiliations. This is the phenomenon that the elders describe, when the body rests, and the spirit relieves itself to float into the outer spheres. I have taken to sleeping with the hallway light on, thinking you would come, hoping for it but being a little fearful still. I have been conditioned, after all, by the limited and ridiculous imaginations of those that have been given license to create entertainment. They depict images born out of fear and faithlessness. If you had been here we could have discussed it, and the interesting and crippling aftermath of your departure.

Your appearance was unkempt at first. You came bruised and with restrictive forces that I could not see, asking them if you could tell me where you were. But they prohibited you from identifying your location, and I wanted so badly to know. You told me that you were taking time to adjust and that you were studying again. I was uneasy when it was over and recounted an abridged and more palatable version in the retelling. In the next moment, you seemed more confident, preparing me for the trip you would soon take; you were full of suggestion and metaphor - affording me a luxury in the realms that you did not give me in life. Maybe it was necessary for me to relive it elsewhere, re-envisioned. I wept and begged you not to go. You were resolute. Then, another night came and I slid under the covers ruminating over personal issues intermingled with thoughts of you. It has been that way every night. We stood with our siblings around us. Yet, we were the only two in conversation. There was some surge of light being produced from your skin; brown, brown, shimmering brown – brown in luminescence. Your hair flourished down your back in its natural state. Your eyes were so knowing and full of affection. And so, my brother, you have finally found your place, I said. Yes, you responded. Yes.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

Our cars rolled one behind the other like we were first and second in a motorcade. It was a sunny afternoon, some of the most beautiful weather that had come to town at that point; a sample of the summer you would never see. I led the way to the highway. It was a route you had never taken. We had placed the cargo we were delivering in the seat behind mine. The child said he would rather take the ride back with you, going the same way he had come; choosing you to be his carrier once more. We laughed about it on the sidewalk and then entered our vehicles. I smiled to myself as I pulled out into the main road. You were waiting for me there.

We drove through a city in which we had faced so many obstacles, shoulder to shoulder, and survived. We had a history here. Our destinies had been tied together in knots and had stretched back through these streets and across the continents. And now we were together again, as we had been so often, sharing a moment only we could share – there is such a bond between us.

I led your way out of the borough, ushering you out. My God, but it was a pleasant day! I could not even locate the troubles of my mind. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw you, taking in the scenery as we drove. I thought about how odd it was, you, looking as if you were sightseeing; as if you had never lived in this place and now saw everything for the first time. We were moving slower than I anticipated, but it seemed appropriate. You were dazzling in the glass, surveying everything around you, seeming so very calm, so stunning and young as the sun showered your eyes, your skin and the edges of your hair in a burst of bronze.