two years ago, today

When we moved I found a few really precious things.  Two tapes containing Brandon singing to me when he was seventeen years old are at the top of that precious possession list.  He's been gone two years today.  Today I pull them out of their box and plug in Eliana's pink Hello Kitty boom box -- the box with the tape player.  Brandon sings and talks, talks and sings.  I realize as I go through this tape that I have listened to this hundreds of times before.  Hundreds of times while I rode the stationary bike at my college rec center, wiping my heartbroken tears.  Hundreds of times as I drove up the five, over the Grapevine, headed to or from school.  I press my ear up to the little pink speaker.  Technology sure was different then.  Golly, his spectrum of musical theatre to bad ballads to sweet croonings is really remarkable.  This was Brandon at his finest.  Brandon's late night madness.  So innocent then.  Just him and his music, singing, "What I Did For Love" into a handheld recorder.  If he started a tiny bit off key, he'd start again, start again until he got it right.  No studio or computers or equalizers.  He never misses a note.

He must have made this right before I left for college.  He's talking about how he'll see me in October.  I wish I remembered the chronology better.  When he decided he had moved on.  When sweet Anna came into the picture.  He's saying, "It's real.  It's really real."  And I'm remembering that feeling of real, that feeling of first real.  And now he's saying, "Bob!  Bob, take care of your sister, Bob (addressing Hilary with her nickname at the time)."  What a relic.  An auditory love letter.  An auditory goodbye.

There have been a handful of people who have really seen me in this life.  Thank you, Bran.  Thank you for seeing me.  Thank you for giving me that space to be me, in all my early adult splendor.  Thank you for knowing me so completely.

You just told me goodnight.

And the tape clicked off.  And now I'm trying to rewind and play the other side and the tape player won't work.  And I'm jimmying and jamming and I don't want to ruin anything.  So I take a deep breath and play some November Rain in your honor via Youtube, know that I need to keep the tapes in good working condition so that I can share them with Hil in a few weeks when I arrive.

Dang.

During my early morning session I listened to you, I drew cards for you, I wrote for you.  I was nervous before I pulled my cards, nervous their magic wouldn't work, that I wouldn't get a sign from you like I did last year on this day.  But, sure enough, there they were:

Schizophrenia
The Miser
Innocence
The Outsider

and there you are, in all of them, falling between the two towers of the two worlds, holding all your pain and brilliance close to your chest, your whimsy and eternal youth, you, always outside, always alone, behind the black wrought iron bars of your own making, made of your mania.  

So there you are, my friend.  The season gently moves in, the light holds out a bit longer and I light a candle for you, sweet friend.  For our innocence and truth.  For your huge and resonant voice, forever alive.

I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.
            ― Ray Bradbury, All Summer in a Day

Natural Light

You are winter.

Soft mist and bare trees

smoke billows over brown hillsides

air heavy with cloud –

white and lifeless,

you hold darkness,

windy mountain roads,

hairpin turns,

music loud,

a cigarette burns through your tired fingers,

hair like a whip,

a curtain of sleek black

obstructs your view.

You are winter.

Long days indoors,

no natural light

books and pages torn, strewn

words and notes,

harmonies and battle cries,

formulas and the pursuit

of quiet.  Pills spill and you

search and search,

up all night,

you sing to the bare sky,

sing to the frozen river,

sing through another season.

In March the sun begins to return,

you’ve survived again.

Daffodils and daylight,

green grasses blaze,

and one Saturday, you

hear your name,

walk quietly down the stairs,

past the pages taped to stairwells,

litter of guitar picks,

boxes of Nicorette,

the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,

back issues of Rolling Stone,

cracked jewel cases, scratched CD’s,

a single white sock,

and breathe in the spring,

carefully loop the rope around the rafters.

The angel of the morning is calling out your name

smooth movements

you’ve done this so many times before

The angel of the morning is calling out your name

and you know then

the pierce of sunlight from beneath the closed garage

the clean scent of dew moving in around you

the eternal warmth of spring.