Sharing Death

Sacramento Historical Cemetery

My brother is calling me.

But he doesn't call. He doesn't ask me to visit. He isn't one to keep in touch. But he wants something. And I know what it is. He knows that I lived something, and he wants to know how to live it too...live through it. But I didn't live it. I died. Sure as self, I laid waste to my own being and parted ways.

How does one share death? Death seems singular. You travel alone.

All of a sudden he is chatty, and excited...as if I have the answer to his unanswered pain. I might have said that I did. I might have alluded to the fact I could help. I want to. It is my nature. I might have lied. I won't know until we sit cross legged on the battered carpet, once beige, now faded to an awful pink. I won't know until his smile breaks off and pieces of him fall to the carpet like Lego bricks. I won't know until we two-arm sweep those pieces...the way he did with his dinner, cutlery, and condiments, drawing them to himself, his two year old self, into himself. "All mine", he would say. "All mine." It was funny then.

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She sits beside me in a television studio.

"People want to solve. People want to help. They would say, 'Have you tried this, have you tried that.' Of course we had. In all that trying we grew further and further apart. And so we gave up one dream and decided to start living."

Amen sister!

And so a book is born. Through it she wants to solve. She wants to help. She did not live through it. She died. Sure as self, she laid waste to her own child and parted ways.

I see her living now. I've never seen such a glow come from death.
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