My Brothers' Keeper by Gloria Reuben

Author:Gloria Reuben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2019-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Nine Months Later

I was loved.

I didn’t have to chase after it or question it. Denis loved me dearly.

I am sitting in my living room a day after hosting a wonderful Happy Birthday America party. I love bringing friends together. I love watching the joy and pleasure on their faces as we chat, nibble on yummy food, and drink lovely wine.

I’m thinking of Denis and seeing in my mind’s eye how much fun he would have had if he were at my party, and how my friends would have loved him. His wit, humor, smile, spirit.

The TV is on but I’m not really watching it. I’m journeying through my imagination.

I had foot surgery a week ago, so I’m laid up at home for a little while. Unfortunately, the TV is on more than usual, but so be it. I hear the familiar voices of the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and I glance to the screen. Lo and behold, a skit has started about what an entertainer would do at a funeral.

My daydreaming has ceased, and the skit has my full attention. Try as I might, I can’t bring myself to laugh, even though the comedians are hilarious.

For you see, it has all come rushing back. The image of my eighty-five-year-old mother standing at the head of the casket looking into her eldest son’s face, quietly repeating his name. “Denis. Denis. Denis.”

I’ll never forget that image. And I’ll never forget all that it took to make it through that time. From the moment I arrived in Toronto a few days earlier to standing there in Vancouver, five feet behind my mother, seeing her aged back stooping over, wishing more than anything that she could speak with her son again.

It was almost exactly the same memory and image that was cemented into my consciousness twenty-two years earlier, when I was standing about six feet behind my mother as she sobbed over the casket of my

brother David.

I turn the TV off and put on some music.

I’m weeping. The music that just now happens to be playing on my cable channel is a piano piece that was part of the playlist I put together last fall. The playlist that was the only thing I listened to during those awful two weeks in Canada last October. The same reflective and sensitive solo piano piece that I would listen to first thing on those somber mornings. The piece that would gently ease me into restless slumber at night is playing now.

I am wracked with grief and loss. I realize how much I’ve been in denial about Denis’s death. I have distracted myself with work or the pursuit of work. I have planned and hosted a July 4th party. I have placed my love and energy on men who are neither worthy of nor receptive to my affections. These efforts have been futile. There’s nothing that can protect me from facing the heartbreaking fact that I will never see his face again. I will never again receive one of his bear hugs, or see his glorious smile.

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