Little Bored Fauntleroy looks different on another person's computer, color-ly speaking. In this case, on my ex-bosses computer. Before I moved to LALALAND I worked for a very nice couple while living in NYC and we stayed friends and now I am in NYC type-type-typing away in their living room. They are asleep and I am slightly sotted. And typing. Away.
I flew in last week, late, spent the wee hours here, got up early the next day to catch a train north. My brother's kid number two, a junior in college, met me on the train halfway. My brother's kid number one met both of us at the train station. These kids are amazing. Amazing. We all carry the Dark Humor Gene, and as soon as they said they refer to him as Auschwitz Dad, in a Malibu Barbie kind of way, I knew I could handle this.
Previous to that I wasn't so sure.
My brother is a god.
My brother is a god. Small 'g', I wrote him - don't let it go to your head. But nonetheless. We grew up in fucked up circumstances, and he was amazing, civil, graceful; we were animals. He is the oldest and we are three younger. One civil bit of grace to three eternal yahoos. At 12 years old he got us up in the mornings, got us to school on time, got us dinner, watched after us, took care of us, and we did not one thing to help. He was always otherworldly and we were always animals.
And now I am sitting there looking at Auschwitz Brother. Saturday was bad, and so was Sunday, but Monday is a good day and we are talking, sort of, about Chicago. Because I have an opening there next month. He told me to try to see a game at Wrigley Field. He told me to go see the newspaper building. All I could remember was the Sun Times. He said no, the Tribune Building.
I asked him if he saw the Superbowl, knowing quite well this was the day he told my father, a life long Giants fan, that he was going to die. He told him this in a usual Sunday night conversation just before the game.
Great game. I didn't get the news until the following Monday.
So I'm talking to Auschwitz Brother about the game, and he has enough presence Monday to say, "I only saw half."
"I hope it was the second half," I say.
"No, it was the wrong half."
What's not to love?
Earlier today I came back to NY - my father, a whole other story, arrives at the house tomorrow. I suspect my father, also ill, will not bear well in his already struggling heart the loss of his number one son. I suspect 2012 will SUCK.
I woke up this morning crying, because I knew this morning was the day I'd be saying goodbye, and I couldn't. I could handle Auschwitz Brother, but I couldn't handle goodbye, so I woke up this morning deciding I wasn't going to do that, say that.
So I'm like an hour away from having to go to the train station and AB heads into where a hospital bed has been brought in so he doesn't have to climb stairs, since he can't climb the stairs. His wife is helping him with the walker, onto the bed, and I am in the adjacent sitting room. She looks at me through the door and says, Do you want to say goodbye to your brother?
I'm thinking, Not really.
Then she walks out, away, far, far away and now I have to go in there and say goodbye to this guy.
So I go in there and I get his legs on his bed for him, I do it better today; he can't do it himself, he wants the one leg first and then the other, but the previous day I didn't coordinate them too well. Today he told me I did it better. And I was fucking losing it, the very thing I didn't want to do, but I was. I looked at this god, this shadow of a man, my dying brother; I kissed him and he looked at me, full on, AT me, and I said, I'll see you again, I'll see you soon, and I kissed him again, adjusted the blanket on him, the way he wanted it, said, Have a nice sleep, and tore the fuck out of there.
And I think: maybe I could have rehearsed that one a little better.
And either way: now I'm crying so fucking hard I can't breathe.
Because I didn't actually believe in God, capital 'G', I'd written him; you have to take your gods where you find them, and I am losing one of my gods.