Looking Back

  I knew, getting on the bus that morning in Provincetown, that it was the last time I would be making the trip to Philadelphia to visit my brother Rob. As I took my seat and watched the Cape Cod dawn along Route 6A, I searched for ways the trip was different this time, because for me, it was the most important of all the travels to see him. I expected to see things differently or feel the cold more or something, but my journey commenced in the same way it always did: waiting in the car in the dark before dawn, watching the bus driver drive up in his car and come over and unlock the bus, saying goodbye to Betty, boarding, paying my fare, taking a seat, etc. It was all as it had always been, for all the years I’d done it, except this time would be the last, because Rob was dying.

  I never know how to feel about death. I’m close to seventy years old, so death is no stranger to me, but each time someone I love dies, I never know how to act, or what’s expected of me. Now it was my brother, my only full-blooded sibling, the partner of my youth in the war against our parents. I had never lived without him. What to do? His was a death we both knew was coming, and we were not afraid to face it in our conversations after he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We talked about how he felt, and what he wanted done, both before and after, and prided ourselves on being adult, enlightened souls who were not afraid of what we both knew was coming. He even allowed as how he’d had a pretty great life, in spite of the “messy ending.” (His words.) We had it all figured out. Except that wasn’t the way it was, in the end. All the way down on the bus and train, I had worked to wrap my mind around the fact that I was going there to be with my brother while he died. I kept thinking “this time is different.” I got scared, because I didn’t know what to expect, but as things unfolded, there was nothing to be scared of. When I got to his apartment, he was nearly comatose, though he mumbled a small hello when I took his hand and told him I was there. He wanted to die at home, and so he would, but that wasn’t as simple as we thought. I asked for a hospital bed, and we got one and set it up in the dining room, after moving the furniture. Everyone helped, and there were four of us, so we got it done quickly, grateful for something to do, but then we had the problem of how to move him. Luckily, my cousin is engaged to a Philadelphia EMT supervisor, and he arrived and took over the logistics. Then we all sat down around the bed, me on one side, our friend Daniel at the head, John, Rob’s partner, held his other hand and John’s sister Wendy was at the foot of the bed. My cousin Meg sat next to me. We played some music Rob liked, and all of us kept talking to him. I remember for some reason I began to count his breaths, thinking if he got to 100, he might be okay for a while, but at 54 there was a long space without breath, and then only two more and he was still. We all just sat there in silence for about a minute, and then I remembered all the stories about people floating above the scene when they died, so I made us all look up and wave. Then I opened the window and he flew away.