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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
I reckon the entry for December 17 indicated what was to come; I had a whole mess of holiday blog content prepared but couldn't keep at the task as the year wound down. Finding my brother's body has had a deep effect on me, and now that the immediate post-mortem responsibilities and subsequent holiday activities have passed, I am left with the reality of it. Part of that reality is a rock-bottom sense of absolute futility. In recent times I've gained a great deal of perspective from a very good therapist, who has helped me steer clear of the kind of pervasive depression through which I slogged for many many years. It helped enormously; I'm a better husband and father for it. Still, this is worrisome. So why blog about it, especially in the throes of this bigger "why bother"? Probably, like most things in life, for my own sake. To force myself back on my feet and proceed. There is a reason for that, and maybe I'll get into it here eventually.
My brother led a tormented life, mainly due to a complex of insecurities that drove him endlessly inward, toward ever deeper degrees of helplessness and loneliness. He truly bought the idea that he was worthless, which is constantly shoved in the face of almost everyone except the truly worthless, who never suspect it for a moment. I'm not going to detail the sorrows and horrors of his life, but I will say that any grieving I do has less to do with the loss of his life - which happened gradually and completely long before he died - than with the memory of his agonies. The things I wish we could share now... laughter and mutual memories and mutual comfort and easy, everyday pleasures... are the same things I long wished I could have shared with him. His condition prevented it, usually. The last night we spent alone together, I came over on the pretext of fixing a basement window that had cracked. The real reason was simply to spend the night with him and watch shitty tv together, but I figured it'd seem like a "kindness" without the excuse. The dignity of others is delicate stuff. We did hang out some, but he fell asleep very early and was oddly removed... not so much distracted as absent... for most of the time we did spend. Not much to hang memories on there.
So instead there are memories of the awful day and the awful days after. Seeing him there, sprawled on the floor. The coldness of his skin and the rigor mortis. The cops and the coroner. The ghastly version of him in the coffin, done up by the undertakers until he looked like fucking Burt Reynolds after even more facelifts and cosmetics. These things haunt me daily. And it is only for my wife and kids I fight the feeling that all of this... this whole life... is as meaningless as the lottery tickets he bought so religiously, as the banal words of the windbag priest who came to the wake to utter his bullshit about Jesus without a sincere word about the dead man himself, as the rote gibberish of all those clowns at AA who prattled on meeting after meeting about the true concern they all had for one another (neither of us ever heard from one of them after we stopped showing up; I still hear regularly from drinking buddies from long ago). It all means exactly dick.
And yet, it can't mean nothing, even if it does. As I went through his wallet and discovered a little sheaf of photos of Miles and Lily, I felt how much they meant to him. The other pic was Pete, for whom he wept every day. This love cannot be meaningless, even if it is. Of course there is no god, there is no hope and there is no meaning to a fucking thing we dream or do, never was nor will be. But as true as that is, it can't be so. And that makes sense to me when I am with my family goofing around, or with friends carousing or making music. In fact, this whole dilemma/paradox/jerkoff is probably the subject of all my music. This explains, if anything can, why it's worth making. If it is. But it gets harder and harder to make it at all, or to communicate even in the random, trivial manner I do here in the blog. Too little comes back. Still, I'm here typing and why not.
None of it will mean as much as one crazed candy-throwing battle me and Brian and Bobby had, one afternoon many many years ago.
My brother led a tormented life, mainly due to a complex of insecurities that drove him endlessly inward, toward ever deeper degrees of helplessness and loneliness. He truly bought the idea that he was worthless, which is constantly shoved in the face of almost everyone except the truly worthless, who never suspect it for a moment. I'm not going to detail the sorrows and horrors of his life, but I will say that any grieving I do has less to do with the loss of his life - which happened gradually and completely long before he died - than with the memory of his agonies. The things I wish we could share now... laughter and mutual memories and mutual comfort and easy, everyday pleasures... are the same things I long wished I could have shared with him. His condition prevented it, usually. The last night we spent alone together, I came over on the pretext of fixing a basement window that had cracked. The real reason was simply to spend the night with him and watch shitty tv together, but I figured it'd seem like a "kindness" without the excuse. The dignity of others is delicate stuff. We did hang out some, but he fell asleep very early and was oddly removed... not so much distracted as absent... for most of the time we did spend. Not much to hang memories on there.
So instead there are memories of the awful day and the awful days after. Seeing him there, sprawled on the floor. The coldness of his skin and the rigor mortis. The cops and the coroner. The ghastly version of him in the coffin, done up by the undertakers until he looked like fucking Burt Reynolds after even more facelifts and cosmetics. These things haunt me daily. And it is only for my wife and kids I fight the feeling that all of this... this whole life... is as meaningless as the lottery tickets he bought so religiously, as the banal words of the windbag priest who came to the wake to utter his bullshit about Jesus without a sincere word about the dead man himself, as the rote gibberish of all those clowns at AA who prattled on meeting after meeting about the true concern they all had for one another (neither of us ever heard from one of them after we stopped showing up; I still hear regularly from drinking buddies from long ago). It all means exactly dick.
And yet, it can't mean nothing, even if it does. As I went through his wallet and discovered a little sheaf of photos of Miles and Lily, I felt how much they meant to him. The other pic was Pete, for whom he wept every day. This love cannot be meaningless, even if it is. Of course there is no god, there is no hope and there is no meaning to a fucking thing we dream or do, never was nor will be. But as true as that is, it can't be so. And that makes sense to me when I am with my family goofing around, or with friends carousing or making music. In fact, this whole dilemma/paradox/jerkoff is probably the subject of all my music. This explains, if anything can, why it's worth making. If it is. But it gets harder and harder to make it at all, or to communicate even in the random, trivial manner I do here in the blog. Too little comes back. Still, I'm here typing and why not.
None of it will mean as much as one crazed candy-throwing battle me and Brian and Bobby had, one afternoon many many years ago.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
A toast to the dead and living. I hope to complete '08 in the company of the latter. It has been a fucking rotten year, but not without its pleasures. There isn't a great deal I can say other than this. Hope you all find many reasons to smile in the coming 12.