Is Survived

I have four brothers.

Let me begin with the two youngest: Marshall and James. Neither Marshall nor James are related to me by blood. When I met Marshall, he and James had been added to my family because my parents divorced and my mother married their father. My newest, youngest brother was a damn charming four-year-old, and twenty years later, he’s twenty years older, and just as charming. I barely knew James as he lived mostly with his mother and I only saw him from time to time. James died several years ago, one of the many who have fallen to complications that arise as the result of having AIDS. Marshall and James were added to my repertoire of brothers when I was about fourteen and I never lived with either of them for longer than a week or two at a time, though I was always thrilled to have two more brothers.

The two brothers that I grew up with, my blood brothers so to speak, are Rudy and Scotty. Rudy, my oldest brother, is the strong, silent type, and has always been my favorite brother. Oddly, I happily thrived in his shadow--and in the strange borderland between brothers, between him and Scotty, my immediately younger brother. It is he--Scotty, whose death has called me home.

“I didn’t want to chicken out on this one,” my mother says when I returned her call, waking her up. She means that she wanted to be the one to tell me that Scotty had died. It had fallen to Dave to tell my about my grandmothers dying, to call and deliver the news that left me feeling alone, burnt out, lonely and regretful. It doesn’t matter who delivers the news. I don’t shoot messengers anymore.

“I didn’t want to chicken out on this one,” my mother says. But here’s something: My mother has never, to my knowledge, chickened out on anything--except once, when, on a rare visit to the mall, we passed a cart that was selling glass tchochkes, hundreds of little glass animals and vases and these delicate little figures with sparkly arms of glass spaghetti. “Mom,” I stage whispered to her, “I double-dog dare you to pretend you’re blind and run into that cart.” She wouldn’t do it. I think she wanted to, but she didn’t do it.

Burn Through

As I prepare to leave Tokyo, to leave Japan, I push through inevitable selfishness and I push through the exhaustion of the last nine months. I push through the circle of grief that is drawn around me and colored dark with habitual bad humour. I push through the night with a steady patience that is partly the product of nine months in Japan. I push through the night, doing laundry, packing, e-mailing those with whom I had planned to meet this weekend. I push through with a steady patience. I carry twelve or fourteen bags of garbage, two and three at a time, downstairs and put them against the curb. It’s been a month or more since I’ve taken out the garbage and it gets done because this time I’m going to just push through. I push through, walk to the conbini near the station and buy cigarettes and diet coke and a small sandwich that is supposed to be for breakfast. I push through the morning, calling to find out how to get an exit visa so that I might leave Japan without invalidating my work visa. I push through the morning, ordering a ticket home, calling the airline to fix a mistake I’ve made. I push through, showering and packing and calling the American Embassy as a final check that what I have been told is correct: I will be able to obtain an exit visa at Narita Airport. I push through and my life becomes a dream again, unreal, shot through as it is with the hyphae of grief and regret and sadness. It is this dream state that pulls me through Tokyo, through Ueno, the now familiar route to Narita Airport. It is America calling, the dream of America anyway, one of the many American dreams calling, this one crooking its bony finger with a silken promise of death.

At the airport, I am alternately told that I can and cannot obtain an exit visa. Some part of me stands back and considers: If I cannot obtain an exit visa, will l leave anyway? It is a possibility, but I don’t worry because it’s not a real possibility until it happens--and besides, I have left my apartment with the understanding that I may not be coming back ever. Everything that is important, I’m carrying with me. This means that I am actually carrying very little, and as I am leaving my apartment, it occurs to me that there is nothing with me that can’t be replaced.

I buy omiyage at the airport, candy and cookies and green tea, a traditional offering--a traditional Japanese offering I mean--at funerals. I have a coffee and a sandwich at Starbucks and I wait for the Continental check-in counter to open.

Don't Give Yourself Any Time To Think

On the subway, on the train to Narita, Scotty crowds into my thoughts and I push him back, unwilling to fight grief in public. David or my mother has told me that he died of a heart attack in the bathroom of his apartment. The paramedics worked on him for a time but it was too late.

I try to picture this scene, my brother dying on the floor of a bathroom in an apartment I’ve never seen.

He would have been thirty-two in April.

My brother was chased by demons that I can’t imagine having the strength to conquer or embrace. He was a well-mannered young man whose shaved head and tattoos and piercing scared the hell out of people. I was never once afraid of him.

I push all these thoughts back, unwilling to fight or face grief in public. This is not a habit that I've acquired in Japan, but something that I carry with me always.

The Truth About My Family

In my family we die. We die so much that it seems as though we rush to embrace dying. We often die young. We die in bathrooms surrounded by the detritus of rescue efforts and we die in barroom brawls surrounded by strangers. We die. We die over nothing. We die by our own hands, ending lives fractured by violence and liquor and drugs, shattered finally by shotguns and syringes. We die, lonely or not, grateful or not, dignified and not. We hang ourselves from ceiling fans and we smash our cars with ourselves inside them and we overdose on inevitability. We die in hospital rooms, glowing gently, transparent, saint-like, earthly existences slowly erased by IVs that drip holy water into our veins. In my family we die. We die with regret and without. We die when we are old and, too often, we die when we are young, we die when we are so young that it seems almost inevitable that we will die out. We die as though according to a plan that we did not have a hand in deciding.

Is Survived

My brother is survived, as they say in the obituaries. He is survived by his daughter, my niece, and he is survived by the woman who stood by him all of his too short life. He is survived by our mother and the man who was once my father. My brother is survived. He is survived by my remaining brothers, by Dave, by Charlotte and her family, by me. I survive him, but I don’t know how yet. I don’t know how any of us will do this, I just know that we will.