Loss

In an essay on aging, Anne Lamott writes that growing older inevitably brings with it the loss of someone without whom you cannot live.

For me, this loss came nearly nine years ago, when my brother Steven died. Every year around this time, I relive his dying. It is an automatic setting on my emotional clock: from December, when he entered the hospital for the last time, to January, when he moved into the nursing home, to February 25th, the day he died. Those long, dark, frigid days and the anguish of missing him are locked in my muscle memory.

Steven was 15 years older than I. He and my slightly older half-brother, Roy, lost their dad when they were 5 and 7, leaving my mother widowed (at age 29). My mother remarried 10 years later and had me, but left my father when I was an infant, after discovering that he was not only an alcoholic and a batterer, but that he liked boys more than he liked girls.

I never regarded my brothers as half-siblings. Actually, they were my heroes. Roy, who joined the Navy and left home when I was five, tried to step in as a father figure, which didn't work out too well. But Steven was my protector, my mentor, my sidekick and my best friend.

Steven taught me about survival. He did all he could to get me out of the house and away from my mother, who'd started throwing back vodka shots first thing in the morning and washing Valium down with gin and tonics.

Steven taught me about courage. When I was six, he took me to Coney Island where he held me tight as we rode the Dragon Coaster. He taught me about whimsy: When I was 11, he packed up his green, 1969 VW bug and took me on a spur-of-the-moment camping trip to Quebec, where we shared a pup tent, played his out-of-tune guitar and ate hot dogs three times a day, for three days in a row. He taught me about defying convention (and breaking the law), letting me hang out at age 12 in his Bronx apartment where he and his friends smoked pot and brewed beer in giant plastic trash cans. He introduced me to Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen and made up a story to accompany Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

He edited (and made me re-write and re-write) my college essays. He met me at 4 a.m. for a cup of coffee in the St. Louis airport where I was changing planes while en-route to Boston and my first year of college. He was the sounding board for my sieges of self-doubt, my reality check and my comic relief. Now and then he'd call me at work to brighten my day with a dirty joke.

Steven was serious, irreverent and the most honorable person I knew. He taught me to live with integrity, to always be honest, to stand up for myself and to carve my own path. He encouraged me to take risks, make mistakes and keep pushing on. He said there was no other way to live.