day 15,030: lullaby for charles

I talked to you for the last time a year ago today. When I can quiet the wheels of asking myself why I didn’t call you the next day or the morning after that, I stumble again on my gratitude for that last conversation.

 

First, for public record, I was kicking your ass at the word game I made up for us to play. You wouldn’t deny it, even if you were here to try; you didn’t deny it at the time either (in fairness to you). The rules:

 

• You and I each picked three words or phrases that the other person was not allowed to say anymore.
• Every time either of us said a banned word, the other person got a point.
• Repeat forever or until one of us gave up.

Anybody who knows you will appreciate what I selected that you were not allowed to say:

 

• do me a favor
• vis a vis
• incumbent upon

And because I take notes on those kinds of things, I have record of our scores. It suffices to say I was really, really winning.

The whole thing amused you—that I’d made it up, and that you kept forgetting the rules, and that you were losing so badly, and that we both had been raised to think games like these were just so much fun. I’m grateful for that part, too. I’m grateful for the fun and the participation and the completely made-up reason for two forty-something siblings to give each other a hard time. I kept offering to reset the score or give you some words that would be less hard for you to omit (*poke*poke*). You were insistent we keep the words, keep the rules, and keep playing.

 

There were no points earned in our last conversation. In retrospect, wheels quieted, gratitude welling, there is some comfort for me that the last thing I ever did was tuck you in to bed. You were having trouble sleeping, were wrangling a growing list of to-do’s, and called to express all of that. We had talked for a longer time earlier in the day, so this last chat was brief. It was about 4:30 p.m. your time (again, me with the notes.)

 

“I’ll tell you what.”

 

“Go for it,” you said.

 

“It’s 4:30 where you are. How about you try to sleep again, and if you’re still awake at 5:00, give me a call back and we’ll go from there. Okay?”

 

“Okay,” you said. “I can do that.”

 

We said our I love you’s, which we were saying often… and off you went to try to sleep.

 

I can do that, you said.

 

This is where I take a deep and far-away breath every time I recall that conversation. I do assume you fell asleep, relieved of the spinning thoughts about whether or not you would or wouldn’t be able to, whether you would or wouldn’t be rested for the next day, whether you would or wouldn’t be prepared for work and adulting and all the other things. All you had to do was go try. And not for a long time, just for half an hour. And either way, it was clear what to do next: keep sleeping, or just call me back.

 

[Space for another deep and far-away breath.]

 

You and I have wrestled some similar beasts, but their shapes are very different. We punched against time—you when it felt wasted, me when I feel there just isn’t enough of it. We punched against obligation–you because it gobbled up everything else, me because it stands in the way of so much else I want to do. That last part was really important. Because I do have a million things I want to do with my time, and they tend to call incessantly and in unison from a million different directions. You seemed to know that there should be things to want, but what to want was elusive. For what was your rail against obligation?

 

Over the years, we talked a lot about “making time,” about setting space aside to reconnect with things we loved. I remember telling you how for over 20 years I lugged around the digital keyboard I got for Christmas when I was 10 years old, until I was finally settled enough and financially secure enough in 2018 to buy a piano, and how when I sat down to play, even after all those years, the music was still there.

 

“See, you’ve always known that was something you loved to do though,” you said. “I never had anything like that. There’s nothing for me to reconnect with.”

 

[Yet more space for a deep and far-away breath.]

 

Within days of getting the news that you were gone, I sat at that piano. I thought about how I’d told you recently about a story from when we were kids. You had a friend over to the house–a friend from the Early Entrance program, a peer you respected. You had asked me to play something for him, something I had written, and for the first time as teenagers I had gotten the sense that you were proud of me, that there was something about me you thought was cool to share with your friends. I thought how glad I was I told you what it meant to me that you were proud.

 

Then, as I have the privilege of doing as an artist, I put hands to keys, and you poured out a song to me in essentially one sitting. I cried as it arrived and as I played it out, and I swam around in my gratitude that for all of the rest of my life my memory of our last conversation will be of sending you off to sleep.

 

The song really hasn’t changed in the year since. It affirms, for me, that it was a gift both from you and for you. We get to make things mean what we want them to mean, I know. So, if I get to choose, I choose for it to mean that you did find rest. That there was some peace in it. That you had even a brief moment of knowing and enjoying that relief. And that you sent it back to me in this song…

 

Sweet dreams and peaceful rest now, big brother.