Dark
an accusation of guilt due
to my deliberate and
captured words, drawing emotion
in any direction; or,
it’s been identified by those
looking to capture a comet
like summer’s fireflies:
they point with the comfort
of warm blankets, that now is a period
without an ending; it’s a nod or a wink
or deflection enduring propriety; mostly
it’s the haunting of those alive for the
dead’s forgotten.
It’s been five weeks since the death of my older (by two tiny years) brother, Richard.
One mid-afternoon as I was visiting him in the ICU he easily slid into a nap. So I closed my eyes amidst a midafternoon’s bath of sunshine, until the first reel of a daydream began: It focused on a man-in-mourning transfixed! He watched as the Life Miracle slowly dripped from him like he was hung yet unwrung towels that became lighter and lighter as water continued to drain. A voiceover added that water is movement, and movement is fundamentally incapable of staying anywhere for long, especially where it: 1) Isn’t valued; and, 2) Isn’t wanted. I awoke startled, seeing a nurse tending to Richard. In hindsight the man in my daydream was me and I was there to observe dying, to witness the broken pipe my brother had become, and in his case, disinterested in repair, hopeless in patches, and instead, quit. Autocratically, decidedly, and determinedly.
Is autonomously dying rightful? If so, it’s hidden down deep in the fine print that no one reads except those searching for any way out like a trapped diver short of oxygen?
Clearly Richard found his karmic precedent and pursued his resignation with silent bravery and resolve. I’ve been told by childhood acquaintances who have remained in Milwaukee that they’ve overheard self-promoted clucking of crassly ignorant and insensitive hens quoting St. Peter himself, “Richard did not simply give up: The mere thought is preposterous and queerly unorthodox for a son as dedicated to his mother’s care. Give up? Just, quit? Not Richard . . . but that baby brother, the one that went to college . . . For eight years . . . then wouldn’t come home to his dying mother; oh no, had to live . . . in . . . Chicago with his pal . . . No, it’s something I’d expect from him, from the Black Sheep of that family. “
Moments after awakening, your verve ignites the hope of one more day of Summer and you fly from bed covers sticking your landing on chilling quarter-sawn floors like Mary Lou Retton. Skating across the frozen floor you throw open the curtains (as if they were silken chenille drapery hung casually in your Latin Quarter Pied-à-terre) waiting to be awash in dawn’s low-horizon sunlight.
Disappointed, the monotonous Gray Gang rolled into town minutes after midnight like lawless gunmen in frontier westerns. Intimidated townsfolk peeked through barren curtains and set about fortifying their modest homes: Searching for gaps in windows and beneath doors they stuffed the clefts with thick, woolen remnants similar to pre-dawn dog walkers that shelter themselves behind fleece and neoprene.
The liberated leaves figure-skate about my feet then streak skyward caught in a draft like summer kites and the floating dreams of a child: All at once they’ve coagulated into knee-high tempests which zig and zag like adolescents chasing each other at noon time. Colors flash against skies of blue or gray or ashen citrine patch quilts. These October skies challenge the manufactured, yet awe inspired Independence
Day fireworks. The path, covered in a thoughtless arrangement of patterns and color like ballroom carpeting, have been crushed and watered and dissolved into an ingress of mislead and slippery shortcuts. In the day’s dusk, from afar the drained and disheartened scraping of pasted leaves to sidewalks which coincidently echoes the desperate sound of your repeated scraping of an overcooked and decoupaged fried egg from your sister-in-laws idyllic and maniacal “Panicured,” (the cookware’s equivalence of a mani-pedi).
That handful of cooled late summer sun slips through desperate fingers like sand, and jabs through gangways, half-naked trees, and slowly hibernating perennials. Yet each slice of sunlight reminds one of that perfectly chilled Cosmopolitan, sipped, as passers-by were evaluated, or that push-up pop and root beer float enjoyed during a devastating humid evening, or slightly and lightly limed key lime pie savored beneath Mrs. Landowski’s heirloom Sycamore that breezy summer afternoon. We hope we can squeeze just one more day of memories to keep our hope inflated, like the 
boy two doors down who’s anxiously and devotedly pumping a chronically flat rear tire is wholly disinterested in the waning blossoms and bye-bye of blue birds and tumbling bumblebees all which undoubtedly signify Summer’s surrender to Fall. But if we cease pining for what is lost and watch that boy two doors down, we might learn a lesson which the earth has known for eons: Summer is but one season in four, four which may not be idolized as Summer, but which bring changes that tickle nature just like a favored uncle or aunt might’ve brought penny treasures which I adored.
And like the forever flattened tire that the boy two doors down finally acquiesced, try as hard as you might, we’re simply observers of a world that remains true to it’s own change of seasons, or, if you will, its life’s purpose. What might our world be if we expressed an unwavering commitment to who we are and what we do?
It took my brother 3 years after my mother passed away before he had the courage to go through her things, laugh a little, cry a lot and much like a funeral service, put articles of meaning to her in boxes and stowed them in a place surely to be forgotten in some hard-to-reach corner of the attic or dark corner of the basement.
After that one day when we finally removed the evidence of my mother, we have not, not even once, discussed those boxes or rummaged around to discover them. It was as if, like herself, her belongings were put to rest. But I know for certain that that Sunday afternoon was the most painful day of my brother’s life.
And now it’s my turn, with the exception that there’s nothing I want to keep. I don’t want to remember him by furniture or china or
artwork or clothes. Nothing, not trophies or photographs or clothes or christmas ornaments could possibly compare to the degree of intimacy and occupation I put into motion as part of a strategic plan to keep my brother solvent, without jeopardizing my life in Chicago.
I invaded the privacy of every nook and cranny of his life; I strong-armed him to go to an attorney to draw up the correct documents. I took over his finances. I questioned every single charge on physician statements. I carried a valise with copies of every important event that produced documentation at the ready, attorney drawn HIPPA forms which provided, without question, unfettered access to every health insurance plan and their schedule of benefits, physician bills, EOB, ridiculously high deductibles in lieu of capping monthly premiums, and finally negotiating Medicare physician costs (if they take Medicare), (non)compliance with orders to manage his chronic maladies gain access to all of his medical records back to 1985. There 
wasn’t a single part of his life that I legally did not have access to or was managing or that I would be denied access. In essence I represented my brother, except those requiring an actual body. And frankly, I think he harbored significant anger and to a large extent resentment. But if I and my partner were to first pull him out of his morass, I needed to take extreme measures and I needed the legal system as my wing man. And what evidence do I have to draw this conclusion?
The Best Friend relationship which I had so cherished before I commandeered his life was, at once, extinguished. The day that Social Security deposited his first monthly benefit he furtively initiated a quitclaim of my occupation and immediately liberated his Self from my subjugation like a dog freed from its leash and running, really running, the odors and aromas of independence challenging his speed, agility, and actions of being, in the simplest of terms, a dog.
And I think that’s precisely what occurred when his income was deposited into his account and he didn’t wait for permission or evaluation or reconciliations. It takes a desperate man to abdicate the course of his life and a man aching with humiliation to admit he doesn’t possess the forbearance and seasoning required to navigate the craggy cliffs of reinventing oneself at fifty-eight.
The moment we cleared danger however, he was resurrected in action not in speech and said, “Let go of the wheel boy, I’ll take her from here.”
When you live in Chicago and drive, you live in your car. With so many people living in an urban and cosmopolitan city you’d think that public transportation would be a practical choice. And for many it is: Except they leave their parked cars at home like their two German Shepherds. A car is a car is a car. The streets are so congested that many neighborhoods allow cars with the proper permit displayed on their windshield may park there. Oh, and out-of-town guests? 1) Bone up on your parallel parking skills and a good sense of the length of your car; 2) Expect your host to hand you a temporary parking permit that you must affix to the right hand side of the windshield; if you’re a little light in the ingenuity department be sure to ask a friend your right from your left. Chicago Police are unsparing when it comes to the City‘s parking violation revenue.
So, there are people who own cars but only drive them on the weekend. Which is precisely the same days the suburbanite wish to drive into the city for a game, a museum, or a pizza. Now we’ve got a city constipated by cars, like constipation, all want to go someplace but every street is clogged worse than my drain last week. We call it gridlock. That’s when people headed north, south, east, and west think they should go first and so we have intersections obstructed (which is worse in both metaphors) with the righteous, the immovable, obstructed, and constipated SUV brimming with 8-10 year olds from some sprawltown.
Urbanites never, ever drive on the weekend. Why? Because you’re not driving, you’re sitting, and that I could accomplish without Jenna’s car sickness, Stevie’s allergies including eggs, and guess what Jenna had for breakfast. . . .
Just think, thousands and thousands of cars and SUV’s dealing with the same degree of calamity and torture that the entrepeneur or the cubicalist for a ventriloquist’s thought as they’d left their respective offices on Friday evening. “Two whole days without urgency!”
That’s one of the thing’s I’ve already begun to miss about my older brother, Rick, who died recently. Day or night, long or short trip, I could 
call Rick and we’d gab like a couple school girls. We were the best of friends, which is rare, especially with our current pace of life. But thank God he was a homebody because the odds were in my favor that he’d answer.
But now I simply sit silently as though I’m sitting in a nondescript doctor’s office. I don’t play music as I find it irritating ever since my breakdown in 2008. The only thing I cared to listen to was his voice and old, old jokes which we both laughed at, certainly not for their humor content, but because we’d laughed at the same stale loaf of humor year after year after
year. There’s something cherished in that degree of comfort: You’re allowed to belly laugh free of reprisal. Chevy Chase‘s “Christmas Vacation” produced in 1989 is a goofball, slapstick comedy of chaos, catastrophe, dickies, and eggnog moose mugs which is cued-up upon our arrival. Maybe it’s Clark’s (Chevy Chase) millstone to produce the Griswold’s primo holiday celebration ever! AND which ties all of us together, because we’ve all felt a similar degree of disappointment that Clark Griswold felt.
Or when I’ll never again, upon answering the phone, hear his voice say , “Hey, buddy . . .”
HARLAN DIDRICKSON 