Shock

Shock

I joke with the woman as Rudy and I order flowers. She asks what we want on the card and I say, “I guess ‘Congratulations’ would be out of order.” It is a joke that my younger brother would appreciate.

All the day hinges on one event--going to the funeral home to see my younger brother’s body--and as it nears midday and I have yet to do so, I ask myself if I am afraid or in denial. The answer comes back that I am not in denial that my brother is dead, nor am I afraid of the body. What I am afraid of is feeling anything about this entire event. It’s easier to hide things with a joke.

“Do you want the fifty or eighty dollar arrangement?” the flower lady asks. “What’s the difference?” I ask. She says there are more flowers on the eighty dollar arrangement. I turn to Rudy. “Which do you want? The eighty?” He kind of shrugs, a man’s way of answering a question so that you don’t know if they care or not and could make yourself--or them--crazy trying to figure it out. I don’t bother trying to extract more information from my brother. Instead, I turn back to the woman and say, “Give us the eighty. What the hell? You only die once.”

Culture Shock

“What’s an example of a joke in Japan, Auntie?” my niece asks. Japanese joke, of course, but how to explain a joke--in any language. I think about how a long explanation (of one of the few successful jokes I’ve made) would sound. Maybe the day I was in Jimbocho with Akiko and Dave and she pointed out the salmon roe for sale. “Ikura,” she said. “Salmon roe.” And I pointed at the kanji sign and said, “Ikura desu ka?” Which could be translated as “Is it salmon roe?” or “How much is it?” Or I could try to explain the Kachi-kachi Yama joke that hinged on the kanji for mountain, which has two pronunciations (yama and san) and the insertion of the other pronunciation into “Otsukaresama des’” to make it “Otsukareyama des’” and...I take too long to answer and my niece says, “That’s okay, Auntie.”

The New Mexico sky, the sky I was born and raised under, is intensely blue, almost too blue, and I am gratefully aware of its presence.

Shock

My brother’s coffin is gray, metal, lined with a soft off-white fabric. An arrangement of flowers--white roses and lilies and green ferns--sits on the casket. My brother is wearing what he would have worn in life: A dark maroon jersey with the word “Harlem” on the front, jeans, a belt. The joker tattoo on his right arm is clearly visible, but none of his other tattoos are. His hair is cut close and he has the slightest bit of a goatee. He holds a white rose, tipped purple. I don’t want to touch him for a long time, but that is not personal. First I have to wrestle with the taboos that forbid us from touching death and dead things. It takes about ten minutes, then I go over and touch one of his shoulders, touch his hand and brush cut hair. He is cold.

Finally, finally, I cry.

I think about my brother when he was a child, the darling incongruously blonde-haired youngest in my family. He was a sweet child and retained some aspect of sweetness into his adult life. My family, I think as I look down onto his cold face, has just lost the only diplomat we have.

Culture Shock

My aunt notices me bowing to a group of strangers to indicate that they should go before me through the open door of the Mexican restaurant where we have dinner.

Driving somewhere with my brother, he comments that he hates being out at that time of day because its so crowded. I look around at the road, partly filled with cars, and I think: You’re going to hate Tokyo. There are thirteen and a half million more people in Tokyo than there are in Albuquerque.

Shock

At the rosary, my father doesn’t recognize me as I shake his hand. His wife smiles up at me friendly, stupidly as I shake her hand. The last time I saw either of them was sixteen years ago, when I was eighteen.

I take my place at the end of the pew so that people can file past and offer their condolences. I sit between my mother and Rudy. I have to introduce myself to people I’ve known all my life as they file past. “I’m Scotty’s sister, Brenda,” I say to the people who recognize some family resemblance and pause. Others, an aunt, shake my hand with the perfunctory shake you offer to strangers, and then later return with an embarrassed, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t even recognize you.”

The priest kneels before the coffin, his black leather cowboy boots jutting out from his white robes. He prays the rosary in Spanish and English and the congregation answers in Spanish and English.

Shock

I feel like I have been beat up. My whole body aches and when I touch my stomach, it feels like it might open up some gate that holds back the grief.

Culture Shock

In Houston, I try to speak to a woman who is obviously Mexican. She is sweeping the carpet and I am in the way and I want to apologize in Spanish and only Japanese comes out.

The same has happened on the plane, when I tried to catch the attention of the blowzy, blonde American flight attendant and only, “Sumimasen,” would come.

Shock

I will tell you a story about my brother that Erin/Sophistica loved: My brother was having a birthday party and asked me to bring a pasta salad. I asked him what he wanted on it, and he told me he wanted olives and some other stuff and I asked him, “What about feta? Do you like feta?” “Feta?” he asked. I described feta, which I know he’s eaten, to him. “Just a second,” he said to me as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his ever-present cell phone. I assumed the phone was set on vibrate and that he’d received a call. He held the phone up to his ear but said nothing. After a few seconds, he spoke: “Tina,” he said to his wife, who he’d just speed-dialed on his phone, “do I like feta?”

Culture Shock

“What’s the food like?”

“Have you been in any earthquakes?”

“What do you miss the most?”

“When are you going back?”

It feels strange to wear shoes inside the house.

Shock

It hardly seems real that I will never see my brother again. That hasn’t sunk in yet and I don’t know that it ever will.