Yesterday, my late Brother’s Memorial in Canada with family and friends, which followed his Phoenix “Celebration of Life” in January.
I couldn’t go.
I couldn’t get myself to watch the service on Zoom.
I couldn’t pull myself together to read the few words I had written about my younger brother, sending an email to a Cousin, letting her carry the weight.
Memorials rip open still raw grief. Suffering is best done in silence, alone. For Some.
As I was preparing my thoughts on my Brother, I found him fading.
I can’t make out his face, but can see the dark, sunken hollows of his eyes.
I can’t recall his last words, but can recall his raspy voice, his vocal cords damaged from tubes winding down his throat.
I can’t make out his body, a silhouette now, fading, withered from being bedridden for months – but can feel his hands, soft, his grip, firm, from that last handshake.
I rub my index finger and thumb together, and I’m drawn back…
He steps up to the tee box. He’s standing calmly over the ball. Click. He re-grips the club once, and then again, softly. Click. His body now still, his hands quiet. Click. He takes the club back, in a slow, smooth arc. Click. He pauses at the top. Click. He pivots his legs and then his hips in a full, graceful follow through. Click. The ball explodes off the tee. Click. The Titleist, a white speck, streaks the ever so blue, sky. Click. The ball lands softly in the center of the fairway 275 yards from the T-box. Click. Art, Bro. Fine Art.
But all of this is fading, I’m losing him, as Wallace Stevens loses those that he has loved:
The figures of the past go cloaked.
They walk in mist and rain and snow
And go, go slowly, but they go.
Prior background posts on Lorne. Photo: Mist by Risto Ranta
