This piece was written a few years back by my amazing and talented sister, whom I've always considered a writing mentor. I felt I had to share it because of the way it made me feel then and how it has changed me today, as a better brother and friend to my sister. Enjoy.
Latest Goodbye
I don’t know my brother. He graduated from the University of Northern Colorado this past May and moved out of the house sooner than I had the courage to get to know him. I helped him put his room in boxes, neatly labeled each one’s contents—CDs, T-shirts—each item becoming less and less familiar. His things were only recognizable to me as long as they were in his presence. I took it upon myself to carry each box out to his Honda Accord, staying busy to avoid conversation. I saw his skateboard leaning against the garage door, its scrapes and peeling stickers evidence enough of his love for the sport. He’d gone through a lot of skateboards in the past few years, shattering the bearings, snapping the boards in half—he claimed they broke in the middle of tried moves, an ollie here, a kickflip there, all typical wear-and-tear. But I had seen him mess up a trick before, watched as he picked up the board and slammed it on the curbside, sending the broken pieces flying into our next-door-neighbor’s yard. I watched as he slowly, patiently, picked up the shards of board and walked them in his arms to the trashcan, dropping his temper in piece by piece. A kickflip.
My parents and I followed him in a separate car, driving to Fort Morgan, Colorado, his new home and home of the Fort Morgan Times, his new employer. The closer we got to Fort Morgan, the flatter the land became, the greener the grass grew, and the more country music played on the radio—songs about past days and leaving. I wondered what drew my brother to Fort Morgan, what struck him about life in a town surrounded by silos and long stretches of highway. Maybe it was just that—another unexplainable act of my brother’s, another penny in the well.
In those two hours, I found myself memorizing his license plate, counting the times he used his blinker when changing lanes, making a conscious effort to include him in the moments of that drive. I hoarded those few facts, making a last minute stockpile of my brother. I felt it my duty to remember something of my brother, anything.
I pulled out the book I’d been reading that summer from my purse, opened it to the page bookmarked with a laminated poem of my brother’s, a poem he’d written for me as a birthday present, a poem titled My Name Spelled Out For You. I read through the phrases that I could have recited by heart, words that despite familiarity, still carried a foreign voice, the voice of someone I couldn’t possibly imagine ever knowing. “When your days become dark and sleep frightens your eyes, look out your window and you will see brother spelled out for you, loving you. I love you more.” I would read it every night before bed, search for something I knew before. I’d imagine him at his computer, staring at the words on the screen, saying “I love you more” out loud in the dark.
After nine barber shops, twelve fast food restaurants, and eleven liquor stores, we turned into the Sunnyside Inn’s dirt parking lot. The one-story apartment building lie in between a field of corn and a drive-through liquor store-pharmacy. It looked more like a long string of trailer homes than an apartment complex, cheap and impermanent. My mom mentioned how tidy the landlord kept the place. In just a few hours the four of us had set up furniture, hung pictures, organized kitchen cabinets, and filled the refrigerator with plenty of food. We used the extra time to sit on the loveseat in his living room, looking around at our finished work, silent most of the time, except for my dad’s “We’ll haul that up next time” or my mom’s “That looks nice there.” The apartment had gotten smaller as the day rolled on, as more and more furniture had filled the empty space, and I now found it impossible to sit staring at the walls, listening to chitchat. I got up to walk outside. My first step out the front door and I noticed the large quantity of cigarette butts lying in the dirt, caked in their own ash. I knew soon enough my brother’s own cigarettes would add to the mix.
He had been a smoker for some years now, a habit my parents knew about and perpetually harped on him for. He would lie to them about how often he smoked in an effort to calm their nerves, make them think better of him. I always wanted to harp alongside them, tell him that he was sucking years off his lifetime, but I didn’t want to highlight his crutches or emphasize my being different than him. He had smoked in front of me before and each time I felt privy to an unseen side of him. I would watch his hand bring the cigarette to his mouth, his lips curl down while smoke peeled out, tattoos peeking out from beneath his t-shirt sleeves. I watched him like a movie. Sometimes I think I could never tell him to stop smoking for fear of losing that image of him kissing cigarettes.
I took a short walk around the building, located the landlord’s apartment, tried the door to the laundry room, all the while fingering the inside of my wrist, my fleur-de-lis tattoo. My brother has the same tattoo on the inside of his right wrist—we had gone to the tattoo parlor to get them together, had planned on inking some connection between us. He had some odd number of tattoos, was in the double-digit range before I got my first and when I mentioned getting my third, he jumped at the opportunity to get another one. It was only after explaining the legend of the fleur-de-lis—the lily flower that sprouted from the tears of Eve as she left the Garden of Eden—that he suggested getting the same tattoo, doing it as a sort of brother/sister bond. More than anything, I think he wanted the fleur-de-lis for its symbolic meaning: that deep emotional torture can give rise to beauty. I would find myself touching my wrist often—thinking of my brother? Maybe. Thinking about how our tattoos might mean less than what we’d like them to mean? Probably.
As I looked away from the window of an apartment with its shades open, I came across the Fort Morgan Times vending machine and stopped to read the front page. The day’s issue included an article previously submitted by my brother and I found myself reading his name aloud—Cameron Mathews, Business Editor. Not much of the communicator in the family and yet here he was in journalism, the unspoken word, writing stories, getting his name printed daily. In a town with population two-thousand, it’d simply be a matter of weeks before the whole town would recognize that name. And after twenty-one years of my growing up with him, they’d know as much of my brother as I did.
We didn’t stay for very long after moving him in. We could tell he wanted to be alone in his new place. Living on his own was nothing new for my brother. He had practically lived elsewhere all summer. I would catch him for a few minutes each week, usually in the garage. I’d be just getting home from work and he’d be leaving for the night. Sometimes he’d compliment me on my dress, ask if it was new, tell me he liked the way I did my hair that day. I’d ask him where he was headed, if he’d be back that night. We were good at small talk, asking questions with simple answers, though somewhere in our formalities, I could detect honesty, a hint of genuine interest. Times like those I think he wanted to know me better too.
As early dusk settled itself over the Sunnyside Inn, my parents fidgeted with how to begin leaving. My parents took their time giving my brother hugs, talking over his shoulder, telling him they’d miss him but see him soon. My mom even teared up a bit, re-embracing him a few times in a row—my brother letting her. A twenty-four year old man yet my mom still cried when leaving him, not wanting to let him go. My dad ended his goodbyes with a firm handshake and a pat on the back—a common image of father and son and I found it looking exactly that—everyday, instinctive, and completely uninhibited. I waited until he looked at me before I walked towards him. I had no idea what I would say, what I should say. I found myself in his arms, completely speechless. My head came to his chest and because he was unafraid of squeezing a little too tight, I could feel his heartbeat on my temple. He held onto me for longer than I expected, and I found myself hugging him for real. Neither of us said anything and we parted without looking into each other’s faces, perhaps refusing our moments of clarity—mine that I should have initiated moments of affection more often, once more even.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, I felt lonely for the kid, us driving away, watching him leaning against the open door, squinting against the sunlight, one hand in his pocket, the other waving goodbye. With his figure framed in the back window, my brother reminded me of James Dean. The matte of the building’s siding, the muted color of the dirt, and the nonchalance of his stance, all of it, accentuated his handsomeness. I stared at him through that back window until he finally looked away. In that moment, I think I saw an expression of sadness on his face and for the first time, I knew something of my brother, for we had something in common—I was sad too.
