metanoia's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My brother is dead, Part II I feel as though I need to finish the saga of my brother�s last days. It will be another completion in a series of full circles that has been 2004. A side note: I wrote this and lost the whole damn thing. I doubt this one will be as long and detailed. I regret that I lost it because I am afraid this second writing will lose a lot of the true emotion I shared. After my Saturday email to family letting them know that my brother was going to Utah with a daughter none of us knew he had, or what her name was or what her address or phone number was, family kind of freaked out. I was under the impression, by my conversation with my sister-in-law, my brother was on his way to Utah at that moment. My niece called the hospice and he was still there, as were the daughter and her husband. My niece called me and told me this and I immediately called the hospice and spoke with my brother�s �new� daughter, who I guess is also my �new� niece. I was able to get her phone number and address. I then spoke to my brother and asked him if he wanted to go to Utah. He said yes, he did, and if it didn�t work out he would just come back to Palm Springs. So, okie-dokie. I emailed family with information on where brother would be staying, gave them a short update and went to bed. At this point I felt so flaky sending out emails with conflicting, ever-changing details, that I was just numb. I dreamed and dreamed, dreams of convoluted messes and unresolved issues. Because of the time difference from coast to coast, I would hear about things in the evening, while it was still afternoon there on the west coast. On Sunday afternoon, my sister-in-law called me. (At this point I was dreading each time the phone rang.) She said my brother put the �kibosh� on going to Utah. She was very disappointed. It seems as though the nurses at the hospice were trying to discourage the �new� daughter from taking my brother to Utah, saying he was terminal, required 24-hour care and was violent. �New� daughter was going to take him anyway. That is, until he ripped some kind of machine out of the wall and hurled it through the plate glass window of his room. Then, she and her hubby decided that maybe it was going to be too much for them to handle. So, no go to Utah. My brother was pissed and disappointed. He just mumbled about more broken promises. So he didn�t go to Utah. I emailed family to that effect and prayed it would be my last email update for awhile in this bizarre, grueling debacle. My sister-in-law called me on Thursday of that week to say that it was all over. At first I wondered what she could mean, but I realized she was talking about my brother�s life. He was gone. His last words to me were, �Well, then, I�ll see you at my funeral�, after I told him I did not think I could come and get him out of there since they would not even tell me how he was because the only person they will talk to is his wife. Except they were letting his new daughter take him, so what the fuck was that all about? But, anyway, his last words to me were snotty. So, then, there�s that. My brother�s life was excruciating. He was like a raw nerve, or rather just an entire body stripped of skin and bared to the elements � so super sensitive and in pain. He loved deeply, lived deeply, dramatically. He could be charming one moment and cruel the next. He was larger than life, or acted so. In his last years he became timid, small and unsure of himself. He was resentful and snotty and inconsiderate and selfish. He began to implode. These are just random thoughts, now, random memories. These are just impressions that come up for me. The other morning, in the bathroom mirror, I looked at myself and gave me a good talking to. I cried, and I reassured myself that it was OK to cry. I gave myself permission to be me. So odd; but also significant. Intellectually I am not sure why it was significant, but emotionally it feels significant and validating, so I am going with that. I feel as though I am reawakening, or even just awakening. I feel new, but not in a fresh way; new in a way that there is a way of being that is open to me now that does not have the shadow, the color, of another�s judgment. I don�t want this to sound as though I have been judged and repressed, but on the other hand, maybe I have been and just refused to acknowledge it� There I go over-thinking things again. Let me go back and just say this: I feel that I am reawakening a self that is unencumbered and free to pursue opportunities and life experiences in a brand new or old way � whatever I choose to do at the time. There. This year has been one of extreme highs and lows for me: My sons marriage, my brothers death and all the drama in between, including scattering my long dead mothers ashes according to her last wishes. And life goes on, and so do I, until I don�t, anymore. Good bye, brother, dear. I pray the after-life is easier for you to endure than life, itself, was. 1:58 p.m. - 2004-12-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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