“I remember screaming. The kind of ear-splitting screaming that originates in the center of the chest, the kind that renders the throat raw for days after it’s over. The one the neighbors call the police over. The kind featured prominently in those overacted movies on Lifetime.
I can scarcely believe it was me.
I'm by no means what I would consider an overly emotional or sentimental woman. In fact, most of the time, my tone drifts on the edge of sarcasm; the rest of the time, it dives right in. A standard hug from me usually consists of a clap on the shoulder.
So the dramatic reaction to my older brother's death, while justifiable, is still surreal to me. What's even more surreal?
My brother, dead. At 48.
Even now, months after his rapid return to ashes, I'm still struggling to process that I will no longer exchange the "Hey Bonehead"/"Hey Knucklehead" greetings; that I will no longer roll my eyes when I find myself embroiled in a seemingly endless conversation; that I will no longer get random T.O.Y. (Thinking of You) texts that made me again roll my eyes while smiling at his corniness.
Every day I get small reminders of times that I didn’t think I’d catalogued.”
The rest of the story starts detailing some of those catalogued memories. But today, on what would have been my knuckleheaded brother’s 49th birthday, it doesn’t seem right to talk about those early memories. Instead, I’ll talk a little about who he was, what was said to have happened and try to come up with some explanation. In the end, it still doesn’t explain why he had to leave so damn early, but it….
My brother had three names: the one he was born with as a Junior to my father; the one he was labeled by his family and friends from the country and as his younger self, prefaced with the word “Lil” (pronounced exactly like that); and the one he made for himself in trying to establish himself as his own man: CeJa. Even his self-established name underwent three evolutions: at first it was just the abbreviated versions of his surname and Junior; then it was spelled with four letters and two accent marks; finally, it was pronounced by those he met in latter years like this: “Say Jah.”
For all his evolutions, he still remained Lil Melvin to me, which, when we were in mixed company, annoyed him to no end. he probably preferred Knucklehead to a name I’m pretty sure he felt represented his diminutive childhood. Point taken.
By all accounts, my brother appeared to be pretty fit. Even at 48, he’d only developed a slight middle-aged paunch—literally, his beer belly, since he did like the stuff. He ate relatively healthy; he certainly was fonder of vegetables and seafood than I am. He rode bicycles, went for long extended hikes in the woods, at one time conquering part of Stone Mountain in Georgia. He loved fishing and just being near water. Half of the pictures I found of him had him standing in front of some seashore.
But the truth was, especially in his last year, he was not as healthy as he appeared to be. He was a long-time cigarette smoker, and up until his last year of life, enjoyed the occasional joint. He consumed harder spirits too; I think he was a little more partial to brown liquors than white but like me had tried the gamut. Like me, he was myopic, even though most people would say that they never saw him wear a pair of glasses. I’m not even sure he wore contact lenses. And of the two of us, his respiratory function was worse. While I have all-year-round allergies and wheezed a bit as a kid, he never outgrew his bronchitis, so he was supposed to carry inhalers. On top of all this, he had problems with his blood pressure and his cholesterol. He was the junior of his father in that they both had prescriptions for the same blood pressure and cholesterol regulators. And of course, in saying this, I cannot ignore all the genetic cards stacked against him on both sides: besides bp and cholesterol, there was diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, aneurisms, MS, and whole other range of options including the fact that he carried a Sickle cell trait.
A year before his death, he started having attacks that hospitalized him several times before he died. At first he was diagnosed with pneumonia. After looking at some basic medical websites (WebMD and the Mayo Clinic), it could very well be that my brother was misdiagnosed from the very beginning. Nevertheless, he was being a typical-hardheaded male. Almost as soon as he was released from any medical care, he would resume his normal routine as if he were fine. Our last conversation centered on that very fact. The Wednesday before he passed, we were on the phone. He’d called to tell me that he had once again been hospitalized and that the doctors had drained fluid from his lungs. I remember giving him the reality check that he may have to start thinking about retiring on disability. I also remember telling him that he wasn’t a young man anymore, that he was two years from 50, and that he had to give himself time to recover properly.
Our last conversation was a good conversation. It contained all the elements of our relationship over the years: adoration coupled with disgust, annoyances, and insults. What many people do not know about my relationship with my brother is how much I truly adored him, flaws and all. When I was a little girl, all of my first memories are of him. Dad was physically distant and Mom was emotionally distant, caught in her own delusions. But there he was, teaching me my vital skills, reading to me, making sure my shoes were on the right feet and helping me tie them. Like most typical little sisters, I wanted his attention all the time. So when he became the dreaded preteen, I did what any little sister would do to gain his attention—I hit him, came into his room unwanted and unannounced and just generally did everything I could do. Even if he was yelling at me, he was talking to me. All that ended when he moved away to live with our dad.
I was by turns heartbroken, sad, angry. I moved into his room, co-opted his things. Some of my favorites:
- a red wooden model plane suspended from the ceiling called “The Red Baron” (a Peanuts reference);
- a lamp that he’d made while in woodshop;
- and a record player with 2 LPs: Shalamar’s single “The Second Time Around” and Michael’s Jackson’s Off the Wall.
There was no Skype, no cell phones. Hell, my mother didn’t even have a landline phone. So our contact was relegated to a few phone calls that I would get over my grandma’s house, an occasional card, and a rare visit.
I felt abandoned.
My first cousins became my siblings when I was allowed outside to play (another story altogether).
When I graduated from high school, I thought that we would have a chance to renew our relationship. I still adored him. But by then, I was competing with various girlfriends, hanging buddies, and his own restless search for identity. Within two months of my moving to Maryland, he’d gotten in a car and drove until he found Georgia. There he stayed. There he died.
Of course, he found himself a wife and together they had a child whom I adore as much as I did her father. I can’t even begin to tell you how much that little girl (who will be 21 in a few months) means. For 17 years, she was my closest living legacy until my very own son came along. Watching her grow has been one of the greatest joys of my life, and for her, my brother got forgiven for myriad sins.
One issue of contention that always remained between us was how little he visited our parents. As they got older, the burden of their care often fell to me. And dealing with 2 psychologically unbalanced parents with no support from my older sibling caused me to feel a great deal of resentment at times. He’d been hung up on during phone conversations, fussed at during others, and even given the silent treatment for months on end because he sometimes criticized without helping. In truth, it was my desire of late that he move to live with mom and help her out once my niece graduated. It would have been a mutually beneficial relationship because I believe she would have helped him just as much as he helped her. They could have depended on one another the way Dad and I did, and my worries could have been sliced in half.
But it was never meant to be. Soon after our final convversation, I received a call late Saturday night/early Sunday morning at around 1:30am. The call was from my DBBF, who'd seen a message on Facebook begging someone from CeJa's family to call. She'd apparently put this message as a message from him, and had done it twice, once at 9:30pm, the exact time I was handing off kids that I'd babysat that night.
So here's the timeline: on Friday, my brother had been released from the hospital. Saturday he'd gotten up, told his live-in girlfriend he'd procured a computer for her, then called her later and said he was going to watch a game and have some drinks with the fellas. What he really did was go fishing at Stone Mountain State Park...with another friend. And this is where he met his last moment.
I'm grateful he was not alone. That park is huge. Had he gone alone, it might have been days before he'd been discovered. The official cause of death, which was processed approximately 2 months later, was heart failure. Something ruptured. According to the friend with him, he was talking, laughing as they sat on the pier together. Then suddenly he fell back and wasn't breathing. In all liklihood, he'd died long before the response teams had gotten to him. Out of courtesy, or perhaps protocol, they did CPR until he got to the hospital. His official time of death was in the 9 o'clock hour. And you know the rest from the disjointed narrative I've lain before you.
So as I sit here tonight, nursing a broken foot (another story for another post), I do the only things I can do to honor his memory: a sip of spiced rum from the bottle I'd saved for him and the holidays and a writing homage from his perpetual student. I don't need to say rest in peace; knowing where he died, I know he was in peace when he left this realm. I don't have to say I loved him because even when he got on my nerves, I always remembered to tell him. More importantly, I told him that last time I spoke to him.
