My brother, Jody, died on the evening of March 3rd, 2010, at around 7pm Pacific time. The facility had tried to reach me about 30 minutes before, to report a change of condition. By the time they made the call, the nurse was already on her way to tell them he was gone. I was napping, and didn't answer the phone, which doesn't bother me because I couldn't have talked with him anyway. I got the news from the funeral home calling me around 7:30pm.
Whenever you get news like this, it's always unsettling even when you're expecting it. We've been expecting it since last July. My intention was to make a return trip to see Jody again later this Spring, but it was always a gamble with time.
I haven't cried.
That bothers me to some extent, and I know it bothers my family. I've gotten "misty", as my mom used to say, but I haven't actually cried. Danni, my youngest daughter, has been calling my brother almost weekly. She sent him a Valentine's Day card. She spoke to him on Monday, and reported to me that he couldn't talk long because he was very tired. When I told her she burst into tears and wailed. The next day, I went to her place after work and we discussed the situation. She expressed extreme regret that she did not get to go back and see Jody, but she also clarified some of my own ambivilence about spending money and taking time off to do the socially-mandated funeral trip back to a place that is no longer home for any of us.
She talked about the need for she and her siblings, and myself, to make the trip "someday - when things aren't so crazy and we all have a little more money and time". Truthfully, if I were half the woman girthwise that I am now, I'd go ahead and fly back. But flying back costs me twice as much as it would cost that imaginary normal-sized woman, and this has been a Winter of financial hardship for Danni and one of $1000 PG&E bills for me, and we also just went into escrow on a house. I prefer to put what money I am able to spend towards keeping Danni in her apartment and keeping her car and insurance, and getting us into our own place with a woodstove.
I know this is one of those decisions that will haunt me for the rest of my life, but I also know that Jody doesn't care at this point if I'm at his funeral or not. My regret is that I did not have a chance to see him again, and that Danni did not have that chance, either. For 30 years, the staff and residents of his residential care facility have been his family and that family will have a chance to attend his services. They have been good to him, and they have been good to me. My gratitude is enormous.
In other times and places, my brother's life could have been a nightmare. It has not been so in the time and place that he lived. He was well cared for, and his final months have been lived exactly the way he wished to live them: eating ice cream, watching videos and coloring.
I made a snapshot-book of family photos on the train trip back to Illinois last July. I put in photos of us when we were kids, and photos of his nieces and nephews as kids, then as adults, and with their own spouses and kids. I labeled them all, so the facility could tell who was who and what relationship they were to Jody. I drew a picture of the family tree, with our parents as the trunk, our grandparents as roots, and he and I as the two main branches. My branch curled over his, and my kids hung above him reaching for the future. His branch came out straight and strong from the trunk, just above the roots. The facility staff told my daughter on one of her frequent calls that he spent a lot of time looking at the book, which makes me both sad and happy.
Once when we were kids, we went to visit one of our mother's friends who lived in the city and we were playing out in the backyard and I was supposed to be watching Jody -- but I wasn't paying attention. When I looked up, he was nowhere to be found. Finally, I ran to the back alley, and saw him, a tiny figure walking determinedly with his sway-hipped gait into the distance.
And that's how I see him now.
Good-bye, Little Joe from Kokomo, Wiggle-butt, Mangey Polecat. I'll see you when I see you. Tell the folks we think of them often, and I hope you get all those questions you had answered.
I bet Freckles was happy to see you, and he didn't growl and he was feeling frisky.
And now I'm crying. Of course.
