THE NOTE

My brother and I never said I love you

to each other. Not in the three decades or so

we were in this world together.

We were guys, after all, and guys --

at least the ones we knew of -- joking,

mumbling, and cursing their way

through each day at school, or gazing

cool and distant from the flickering canvas

of a movie screen -- just didn't do that.

When I was a teenager, being shipped by plane

to our ailing mother fives states away,

he walked with me to the boarding gate

at Sea-Tac, surprising me by slipping a piece

of paper, neatly folded and creased,

from the cellophane of his cigarette pack,

and placing it calmly into my hand.

"Read this on the plane," he said quietly,

as though its contents were something covert,

instructions to be burned upon reading.

But his words, painstakingly printed in all caps,

were simple and direct, words which

he could not speak but had, I imagined,

carried from place to place within himself,

until he was certain they were right;

I, too, have spent the better part of a lifetime

trying and failing to find the right words --

sometimes even one -- circling, eventually, back

to the source of whatever needed saying,

and everything that never did.

BEGINNINGS

 

We are lined up quietly against the wood-paneled wall of the hallway, my older siblings and I, as if we are under inspection, or about to give some sort of recital for which we have forgotten to rehearse. But this is not a performance. Certainly nothing that could be prepared for. This is the moment our mother is being wheeled out on a stretcher, hovering somewhere between this world and the other, a bleached white blanket thrown over her, not unlike the heavenly robes in my illustrated children's Bible. This is the decision she has made, for reasons we cannot fathom. I am the youngest, and therefore the closest to her face as it passes. I want to say something -- anything -- want to reach out, but I have only been instructed to stand here, and to remain as out of the way as possible. The EMTs speak rapidly in their practiced medical code, all abstract phrases, acronyms, and numbers. None of it sounds clear. Time makes no logical sense in these moments, everything rushing by in a whir, then to an almost excruciating slow motion. The wheels of the stretcher squeak and clack in rhythm, the screen door slaps open and the ambulance departs, its siren spilling out in all directions. Then, there is only the silence between us, strange but certain, as if it has been waiting all this time to fill each corner of these rooms. Someone will come to check on us, they must. But for now, we are five kids suddenly on our own. Our mother is gone, and will be gone for some time. In some ways, she will never return.