Michael

I sit before my keyboard tonight unsure of what I will be writing, just knowing it will be about or focussed upon my brother, Mike. It seems like an eternity since he died, but it has been less than one week. I thought we were all supposed to die in the order we were born, or something to that effect. So much for the childish logic behind that thought, but it did come back to haunt me when Patty died. Now I have had to say "good-bye" to another of my younger siblings so the thought and the accompanying memories of the child I was when I "figured it all out" are filtering through my brain again, making me long for the simplicity and safety of a childhood that seemed so free from death but that, in retrospect, were only free of the adult ability to grieve and remember it.

Since I was unable to attend my brother's burial yesterday (Saturday), I drove up to the cemetary in Vermont today (Sunday) to say my final "good-bye" and leave some roses on his grave. The cemetary is the same one that holds the remnants of my mother, sister, grandfather, aunt, cousin, great-grandmother, and others of our family. Mike was placed to rest next to our great-grandmother. The cemetary was more verdant that it had been for the buriel of Mom and Pattys' ashes, making it seem a softer, as well as lovelier, place. I keep handing out Forget-Me-Not seeds to everyone whenever we lose a family member in the hopes that the cemetary will one day blossom into a field of beautiful blue flowers - or at least be outlined with them along the stone walls and grave markers.

On my way up for the visit, I purchased flowers not only for Mike, but for my grandmother and aunt, as well. I found a particularly lovely bouquet of mixed flowers that I thought I would place on Mike's grave, but when I was almost there it came to me that Mike would have absolutely loved to have given those flowers to our grandmother, and I knew immediately that that is what he would have wanted, so much more than my placing them on his grave, and as I thought all of this it felt as though my wonderful brother reached down and touched my heart, just enough to say "Yes," that was what he wanted. When I got to my grandmother's room at the nursing home I took both bouquets in and told her the story. She cried a little, but I think she knew what I was talking about and she really seemed to like the flowers - the ones from me AND the ones from me and Mike. Just knowing I will never get to hear his voice again hurts so very much!

"Hello, Liz!" or "Greetings!" were the ways he would preface the messages he left on the answering machine. After leaving the funeral home on Tuesday, I came home and went through the messages on our phone hoping that, maybe, one of Mike's messages was still there so I could hear his voice just that one more time, but they were all gone, erased without any thought that he would no longer be able to leave any more requests for return phone calls any more. Oh, how much the simplest things can mean when they are no longer able to be a part of our lives ever again!

So many of the family stories are still sifting around in my head. Tales of Mike from infancy to adulthood, most from our lives together as a family , having been told and retold by our parents or recorded in their diaries or letters, but a few preserved here in my blog. Some funny, some poignant, but all of them speaking to the person that Mike could have been, as well as the person he was, despite the mental illness and the besotted devotion to his "medicinal" smokes.

It must have hurt Mike to breathe, especially those last few months, but he never said anything about the pain to me or, as far as I know of, to anyone else. He was so sure the smoking was curative rather than the cause of his illness (the emphysema, NOT the schizophrenia) and it was too late to prevent his death due to the effects of the damage to his lungs. I finally realized that we could make my brother grossly unhappy, hostile and beligerant by taking away his cigarettes and, perhaps, extend his life by a few more weeks or maybe months. Or we could let him go and enjoy his cigarettes which, despite the poison in them, did seem to bring him some measure of respiritory relief. I told our Dad I was not going to nag Mike and make him miserable during whatever time he had left. I did not want my brother to die, but there was nothing we could do to prevent that from happening far too soon. After his last hospitalization my heart just seemed to know that the next time Mike stopped breathing in his sleep, they would not be able to wake him up when they found him. That was what happened last Tuesday morning.

After Dad called to let me know Mike was gone, I called the home he was living in, a group home for mentally disabled adults, and asked them not to move Mike until I could get there. I just wanted a few minutes to sit with my younger brother before the onrush of death got too firmly started to yield to simple human need and emotion, despite the goal of its doing precisely that. They waited for me to get there so I could spend a few minutes with Mike before he was taken into the machinary of death our society prescribes. He looked pretty awful, though not as badly as he might have. I could not bring myself to touch his face, so I rubbed his chest and tummy instead - he was covered by a clean, white sheet - as I cried and told him how much I loved him, how sorry I was I had not been able to see him in the few days before he died, and how very much I would miss him. Even through the layers of sheet, the chill of death was obvious and I think that, though they may have tried to revive him, it was likely far too late when they found him for any hope of waking him up again.

Mike's memorial service was Friday, May 27th. The funeral home was able to make him look a lot better than he did when I last saw him on the day he died but, because thay were not embalming him - we were not having an open casket funeral - it never occurred to me they might have to freeze him instead, at least I think that's what they did. He wasn't just cold, he was hard all over, too. Sorry if this offends or upsets anyone, but it is just a part of the reality of what happened this past week.
It really upsets me, too, to think of my brother's brain being frozen and I am not sure why.

Part of the memorial service was the showing of a DVD my (our) sister made about Mike's life and accomplishments - he was a talented poet - and it was not only moving and well done, but also so much "Mike" that I think it touched everyone who watched it. Part of the DVD included a song titled "Today," that was recorded by John Denver. Mike and I used to sing that song together before his voice changed. We sang it over the phone to our Grammy El, who said it was "sweet" and got all sniffly. Our shared genetic heritage, as well as our young ages, melded our voices into a sweet brother/sister harmony that seems all the more sweet, and heartrendingly poignant, now that Mike, half of that harmony, is forever gone. Our other sister has her special memories, as well, and has been struggling to come to grips with the loss of our brother from the perspective of a younger sister, while I struggle as the elder sister. Our brother Mike was special from both perspectives.

Dad no longer has to worry about what will happen to his only son when he is passes on, although he knows I would have done my best to help and care for Mike in his absence. It is truly sad that the cost of that burden being lifted from the shoulders of a loving and concerned parent comes at the cost of the life of his only son - what a crappy way to have a burden lifted! Poor Mike and poor Dad! The relief must not seem like relief at all knowing that Mike is gone and that is the reason the "burden" has gone, too.

As with any situation of this kind, there have been many discoveries for me about my brother. Most have been more reminders of things long forgotten in the onslaughts of life, although some have been revelations. I don't know if I ever knew that Mike was told his intelligence made him a "national resource," but it was mentioned at the memorial service. Mike declined to become a national resource, by the way. This was before the breakdown into the mental illness. And I had forgotten that Mike entered college as a sophomore because he had earned so many CLEP credits.
There were reminders of some of Mike's zanier moments, some of his more frightening episodes, and some of the heartbreaking times when a silly older sister found comfort in the thought that her troubled younger brother might have actually fathered a little girl that "Aunty Liz" would have loved to help care for and love. What a comfort it would have been to have a child of my brother's to care for in the wake of his death - and I am not even sure why this feeling is so strong in me!?!?!

From the time of his breakdown when he apparently was given some sort of hallucinogenic laced pot to smoke and was rescued from the highway by one of our uncles, to the weeks before his death when he insisted that he needed the cigarettes to help treat his "wet lungs," and no one could convince him otherwise, memories have been coming back, some creeping back slowly, others in a headlong rush. The winter Mike was lost in Concord, NH and the police couldn't find him anywhere during one of the worst snowstorms in years; he kept dodging into alleyways and other hiding places because he thought the snowplows were out to get him. He was terrified and so were we. We had to wait at home due to the weather, when what we wanted was to be in Concord searching for Mike, hoping we might, somehow, magically be able to find him where so many officers and city workers had failed.

Another time, again during a snowstorm. the state police found Mike walking down a very barren and seldom traveled road at night. He was convinced that he was Sir Somebody-or-the-Other and that he was heading somewhere he was supposed to, instead of off into the woods on a remote road maybe never to be seen again. There were the multiple hospitalizations and group homes; homeless shelters, soup kitchens, jail cells, apartments invaded by human vermin that prey upon people like my brother. There were multiple cats that ended up being rescued by one of us or by one of Mike's friends, not because Mike did not care about them, but because, in his illness, he was not able to care FOR them. One of his kitties, Dixie, gave birth to a litter of kittens that we ended up knowing for their entire lives - except for Streak. Dixie's kittens ended up being named Pudge, Paws, Edwin Muir, Charlie, and Streak. Pudge and Paws were my babies their entire lives, our youngest (and still surviving) sister had Edwin Muir, Charlie belonged to a friend for his entire life, and Streak was given to the people who bought my parent's house and, as far as we know, ended up living in that same neighborhood for his entire life. Tuxie and Bootsie were the next of Mike's kitties that I and my boyfriend adopted. Tuxie died fairly young due to heartworm. Bootsie died several weeks before Mike. Both Bootsie and Tuxie were buried with my brother. We had them cremated so they could be buried with me when the time came, but Mike had such a poverty-striken life in so many ways. The mental illness just stole from him what could have been his. Letting him be buried with two of the cats he had originally owned and cared for was the very least I could do for my brother. I hope they are teasing him for affection as I type.

So many thoughts! So many memories! Some inappropriate, some irreverent, most just sad and stemming from the indescribable lonliness that comes from having to say too early a farewell to a loved one.

So much more to one lifetime than can be expressed in one blog!

Mike, I will love you for the rest of my life!

Your sister,
Liz