My brother was born big-hearted. I don’t mean to say he was particularly magnanimous, or that he walked around with his arms open to the world. I mean to say that he was open to all the big emotions. Excitement. Love. Anger. Rage. Sadness. Exhilaration. A typical day in his life might begin with me waking him up. Grumpy and annoyed, he would stumble in to the den and plop down in front of the TV, thumb in his mouth, index finger twirling in his hair, to wake up. I must have awakened him this way so often because I was an early riser, myself, and because I craved his company. Most often we fought over television shows and cereal, toys and territories. Still, I started every day believing that we would settle in with each other in comfortable agreement and pastime. Cloudy days, days soft with rain and dim with dark clouds, were easier than others. Those days, we passed the quiet time together in harmony.
I mostly remember his playing with his race cars, or with his friends. I picture a little boy in striped, bell-bottomed pants and a t-shirt, sitting on the floor, making vroom-vroom noises and crashing sounds as he raced his matchbox cars through the air. I picture the same little boy in the same outfit, plus a blue windbreaker, flying down the sidewalk, legs pumping madly, straddling (just barely) the banana seat of his first bicycle. I remember walking down the street with him past the Goodyards house. Going to a neighbor girl’s birthday party with him, with his hair slicked down with water, in his red dress shirt and black tie, when he was 6 years old. And then there was his first football uniform, red jersey with white lettering and helmet. I picture him running as fast as he could but never seeming to gain as much distance as I expected him to. And then his next football uniform, this one gold. I picture him at 12, his long hair burnished with gold and swirling around his head when he ran. And then 13, racing his first BMX. And 14, winning another race, in his young man’s body, broad shouldered, lean, growing tall, left hand on his hip, right foot in front of him, green eyes narrowed as he surveyed everyone around him over his cup of ice. And 16, a shit-kicker, partying with the cowboys and working every macho job he could find. And 17, howling in fury, fists flying as he attempted to fight my father through our living room and out the front door. And 18, too thin, with horrified eyes, his face filled with a rage that seemed to overtake every other expression of his personality for the next few years. And 22, muscles pumped up on steroids, hair in a perm, trying in a desperately sweet way to talk his girlfriend into marrying him instead of having an abortion. And 25, standing in the shambles of the first place he ever lived with a girl, the girl accusing him of hitting her, and him sobbing and swearing he didn’t. And 27, wild, unbrushed hair ranging over his shoulders and down his back, furiously intense and threatening, burning up all our mother’s spoons on speed. And I remember the utterly exhausted man who arrived back in our parents home at 31 following his first hospitalization and diagnosis of bipolar disorder. And 32, defeated in a way that left me speechless, still at home, working on his college degree, afraid to live by himself. And 33, trying horrifically hard to fit hopes in to the same cramped space with his fears and defeats. And 35, smiling bravely at each question about his future and his love life and his health. And 37, vomiting in the bathroom, bloated from medications for everything from bipolar disorder to asthma to an intestinal blockage to high blood pressure to high cholesterol to two slipped discs in his back. And that is my last memory of seeing him. I would say he was always anything, but he wasn’t, really. He was quite changeable. Maybe most children are.
I regret all the watching of my brother I did. I wish I’d paid attention to him, instead.
I can’t seem to write about our childhood, or my childhood, without falling back on gross generalizations and guilt. The big hearted emotions that so defined both of our lives.
Maybe its just that our differences, and our reactions to our differences, were naturally going to cause a lot of guilt, and an ultimate inability to ever really come together, like two magnets facing each other with the same polarity. But I will tell you that I longed for him until I was 18, and that I hated him after that. And I think it was the opposite for him: hate, and then longing. With him gone, the longing is back with me and this one always I know will always be: I will always long for him.
And I think that’s really the most important thing. It isn’t what I suppose he thought or felt about me, and it isn’t all the mistakes I made, or the things about me that might have pushed him away from me (and probably did). The guilt probably isn’t important. What’s important is that I loved him, and I was, and remain, convinced that he loved me. Probably. Hopefully. Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m afraid the most he ever felt was guilty but I so much wanted him to love me. I long for him to have. I long to have another chance to earn that from him.
If only I knew more about what was going on in his head in between those memories I have of him. If only I remembered his own personal timeline, or conversations we had, or things we did together, or people we both knew, experiences we shared beyond those few that I hold in my head. If I did, I could write about him. I could tell his story to the world. I could better understand the big picture, and my own part in our relationship, with more calm than I can muster now.
Oh how I wish I could express it: those memories, real and true, and not just the emotions I surround everything with.
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