THE WIND PHONE
We Are the Keepers of Their Memory
I am the solitary keeper of our childhood — so I decided to tell the world about my brother.
I answered the phone and heard my big brother sobbing on the other end.
“I’m too young to die,” he cried — as his voice faded into a quiet whimper. A deep sorrow grabbed hold of my heart; like hard, cold icicles, I felt I might die at that moment; such is the bond between siblings.
My brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, which he fought bravely. What hindered his chance of recovery was that he was HIV positive. This was the mid-1990s. Treatment was in the early stages, and there was still terrible stigma attached to HIV.
My brother feared his family wouldn’t want to care for him, and he’d be all alone. That was not what happened.
He moved back to our family home. To my former bedroom. We spent our final weeks there — in that room. During those last weeks, my parents were with him for days. Hospice nurses arrived regularly to dispense meds and talk with him about any concerns — making sure he was comfortable. I came every night, and we spent hours together.
I’d massage his feet, wash his face, comb the peach fuzz filling in his post-chemo head, and bring him whatever he needed. All part of what became our nighttime routine. Like when we were young and I’d find ways to make my brother smile. His freckle-faced grin lit up my little sister world.
One of the last things I did each evening was prepare his smoke. He enjoyed an evening joint to increase his appetite and his mood. He’d laugh and ask for his smoking jacket. And so — we’d laugh together about silly things and memories only siblings share. Giggling until our faces hurt. Some nights, we’d eat pizza; some nights, we’d just let our tears fall. Knowing our time was to end sooner than later.
I was to become the solitary keeper of our childhood — so I decided to tell the world about my beautiful brother.
My bearded-tattooed-bad-ass brother whom I looked up to and adored. I’m glad we shared every moment we could. He gave me a list of things to do when he passed — who was to get what of the many things he collected during his travels to exotic places. Some years before he became ill, he took a break from law school to travel the world. He had a sense, maybe a kind of urgency, to visit places he wanted to see.
During his final weeks, he told me his wishes—as we planned his funeral—for songs to be played like “The Wind Cries Mary” by Jimi Hendrix for his last love. I read him the poem that I wrote to share at his memorial. I could barely utter the words; my brother listened with such intensity. As I read, I knew I would soon be standing at the last door he’d pass through.
“My brother, dear brother. Sweet childhood friend. Companion through summers that seemed without end. Your little sister stands at the door. Remembering you. Calling your name once more.”
Like the long shadows cast on a summer’s evening, we knew our time together was reaching an end. Everything in me ached at the thought. I’d have done anything to help my brother. We shared our history and our DNA. I wanted to drink in every last drop that life gave us.
Those final weeks, it seemed to be raining all the time. Mirroring my grief. Sobbing. Aching. Anticipating. My beloved brother was leaving me.
During one of his hospital stays, one evening, as I was saying goodnight, he said, “You can close the door, Misty. I’m okay.” Normally, I would blow him a kiss from the door and leave it open a crack — so he could see the light shining in the hall, like when we were kids. But that night, there was a light shining in that darkened room— somewhere beyond the lightning flashes outside his window.
A sense of hope eased my heart. Slowly closing the door, seeing his silhouette as he watched the storm outside his window. He was so calm and peaceful — inch by inch, I closed the door. It felt like closing a door on eternity.
Walking down the long corridor, out of the hospital with only night staff to say goodbye. Alone in my car, tears of icy anguish warmed, knowing my brother found peace in facing death.
From that night on, amazing things happened. I don’t mean he was cured because he wasn’t. His was like a spiritual healing. But he began to smile more, eat more, laugh more. He even asked me to take him outside so he could sit in the rain.
The rain fell gently on my brother. I watched from a distance as he smiled a quiet smile — something in his manner reassured me. Looking up at the falling rain washing over him, as if counting every drop.
I wished I could hold onto my brother. That he would stay so we could grow old together — and we would laugh about that. We’d joke about how funny life is and how silly, that we were getting old.
My brother taught me as much in his dying as he did in his young life. Just as he had chosen how he wanted to live, he chose his burial plot on a grassy hill in the local cemetery. We went there and sat for hours. He in his wheelchair and me seated on the grassy slope where he was to be buried.
Then, one day, he went back to hospice. We said, “you’ll come home.” He would go home — but not back to my old bedroom with pictures of horses and ballet dancers. On his last day, we sat with my brother in his hospice room for hours — my father, my mother, and me. Holding his hand. It was the last time we would all be together. None of us spoke — nothing more need be said. We’d said it all.
When he breathed his last, I opened the French doors leading out of his room. Sunlight washed over me. My brother again pointing me to the light — melting the icicles that gripped my heart in their deathly cold grasp. Warmed by my brother’s love until his final breath.
“You’re free, my brother. My dear beloved brother. Fly on — wait for me up ahead. I’ll be there. I will find you.”
My brother always teaching me — always ahead of me. He remains always a part of me.
I don’t know what happens after we die. But I find comfort in knowing that love lives on. My brother lives on in me. I believe in that love— for in spite of my grief — perhaps because of my grief — that love helped me find healing.
When I miss my brother most, I remember his smile, laugh, freckles, and presence. Those memories fill me with an iridescence of who my brother was in life and in his death. Though his loss remains a profound absence, the beauty of my brother, having lived, can never be extinguished.
I believe that what remains is the love that transcends death. What a beautiful thing — the love we share with others. An emotion that seems too large for a mortal heart to hold. It overflows our earthly bounds.
