My Brother

I’ve run out of brothers.

My only brother died on the first day of March, 2022.

My brother, the only brother I’ll ever have, the brother who died March 1, pushed uniqueness to the brink. He was so unique that unique became, in his words, very unique even though I said there was no such thing as very unique. And so he switched from saying very unique to saying, and what not.

He liked to say, and what not at the end of a sentence when he hadn’t said all he wanted to say on a certain subject but couldn’t think of anything more to say. I suppose the sentence he’d just said must have felt incomplete to him and so he added the words and what not. 

What’s what not? I asked him once not long ago. 

What not, that’s easy, my brother said, without missing a step, what not is almost the same as ‘everything like that’.

In the hospital in Las Vegas last week, I sat on the edge of his hospital bed. My brother was a big guy, more my father’s body type than me. He had a football pulling guard type of body, though he wasn’t athletically inclined: he’d once walked home in the midst of a Little League game, bored and getting no action in right field. What was the point, he must have thought, in staying out there? Better to walk home, get warm, have some of mom’s Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate.

Sitting on the side of my brother’s hospital bed I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My brother had shrunk, just as his son had told me he had. His legs were the sticks his son had described, his arms were almost as thin.

The first thing my brother said when I first saw him in the hospital was, ‘get me out of here.’

I came back to the hospital the next day. He hadn’t changed. Get me out of here, he said before we went on the talk about other things.

I told my brother that he couldn’t die before I did. That wasn’t allowed. I was the older brother, I had to die first. 

Let’s each make a goal, I said to my brother, for how long we’re going to live. I said I’d start first.

I’m going to live to be 91, I said to my brother.  

My brother said nothing, so I pushed him a little bit. Let’s see, I said, you’re 67 years old. Let’s just pick a number. What if you decided to live until you’re 80?

Your little game makes no sense, my brother said. Do the math. If you live to be 91 and are already three- and-a-half-years older than I am, and I die when I’m 80, then I’ll die first.

I told anyone who’d listen that my brother was far more intelligent than I. He didn’t read much, other than bios of movie stars. He had no real interest in art and even less about politics. We agreed Trump was creepy, but my brother lost no sleep over Trump’s incompetence—just another loser, more or less like some of the people he dealt cards to at the blackjack table at Sam’s Town Resort and Casino. Through the years many of the people he dealt cards to became good friends, even some of the losers. My brother quit dealing cards after 25 years at Sam’s Town

What did he love? People mostly, Paula for sure and Preston, and me sometimes. He had this way of telling you he loved you that was all his own. I love you so much, he’d say, with just the right inflection that could have you believe that you were the most precious thing in his life, while leaving a tincture of doubt.

My brother loved almost everything about the 1950s, especially the cars with tailfins, and the big Technicolor musicals like Oklahoma and South Pacific. He cried pretty easily, and I really believe that he thought of nostalgia as a virtue, and not as I think of it, as one of the deadly sins. My brother actually had a heart, while sometimes I wonder whether I have one or don’t.

The last time I saw my brother alive he was deep inside his hospital bed watching a hockey game on TV, Sunday, February 27, 2022.

I asked my brother, who’s playing? The Golden Knight’s, he said, his favorite team—(he’d become a hockey fan when The Knights opened for play in Las Vegas). My brother said that he’d pooped on the ice just before the game started, but he and the nurse had cleaned it up just in time for the face-off.

I walked up close to the television screen. It wasn’t the Golden Knights playing at all, it was the New York Rangers playing the Pittsburgh Penguins.

We watched the game for a while and talked a little, as much as he could talk. He said Valerie was bringing him fish sandwiches from Wendy’s with extra pickles. I said, you mean Paula? Yes, Paula’s bringing fish sandwiches first, then Valerie, with extra pickles.

Then my brother asked me to wipe his nose, he said his nose was running. I found a tissue and wiped his nose, readjusting the oxygen tubes. As I bent over my brother to wipe his upper lip just beneath his nose I could hear the small comings and goings of the air he was breathing, the stuff that was keeping him alive, through the little tubes.

 My action seemed to make him feel better, for at least two or three seconds. 

My leg really really hurts, my brother kept saying. It really hurts. He screamed so loudly and with such command of the language that I thought the nurse couldn’t help but hear. But the nurse was elsewhere. Erin was her name, a nice woman who was busy down the hall, serving another patient who wanted to get out of here.

I found an extra pillow on the window sill of his hospital room and put it under the leg my brother said was hurting.

 I didn’t know what to do next.

My brother looked up at me. What I’d done with the pillows hadn’t helped him a bit. It was what he’d asked me to do and what he asked me to do became the only thing I knew how to do. 

My brother was so beautiful the last time I saw him. He’d lost a lot of weight and his eyes were huge; it appeared to me that brother’s eyes were so huge that he just might be able to see everything. He could have given me a big hug with those eyes if he’d had the energy. That part of his face had become the face of the giant insect rendered 100 or so years ago by Franz Kafka. It turns out my brother was either injected and/or swallowed 12 different drugs daily, each designed to do something wonderful to his body, perhaps to achieve the special effects look the doctors apparently had in mind for him.  

I bent down toward his face. I kissed him on the forehead, then I kissed him again. 

Get me out of here, my brother said.