The green trace is on the maples and on the cottonwoods. The hasty crocuses have come, and have already gone away. Here and there is a riot of pink blossoms showing on the cherries. Everything is waking up and I’m trying to bind my heart to the deciduous resurrection. Soon it’ll be Easter, and then the long awaited days of early summer. How we do plan and pine to cherish those bright days. Those crystal hours of spontaneity and easy joy, the yellow sun warming cold skin, childhood memories drifting through the new air. Oh, for the nostalgic wellings-up that frame our current joys and ease the griefs that throb beneath it all. My brother is gone but the seasons won’t notice. They will turn over and over to remind me of old stories. But their turnings might also obscure memories, layer upon layer. And if I let them, they will make me forget. But I need to remember clearly now. I only saw my brother a few times a year, for major holidays and maybe for some rare summertime family rendezvous. Most of our adult lives were like that. He began drifting away in high school, maybe even before. But I will miss him for the rest of my life. Every new season, every Christmas, every single Spring.
Now, I tell God over again as I have done in years past like a proper elder brother, “This son of yours, this prodigal, yours.” And now His arresting response, “This brother of yours.” That pain is fleet and it haunts like background noise, even as the Father comforts me. I receive His comfort, I receive the comfort of my friends, the ones who are not afraid of me. They sit near and quietly bare the sorrow too. But now, here are memories of harsh words said by young fools. And now, thoughts of conversations we should have had, of chances missed. And this clutching, drowning desire to refuse the unalterable fact.
This brother of mine.
Now, this morning I tell the Father that I need something from Him, anything. An encounter, an encouragement, a revelation. Hands on my shoulders, a voice in my ear, something to hold on to. Yesterday was so hard. I’m learning that Mondays in this grief season might be a weekly step backwards. Today is more difficult though. I don’t make it through my work day. I leave abruptly with just a quick word to my boss and no explanation at all for my coworker. All day I struggled and tried to be strong but suddenly I can go no further. There is nothing for me to do but leave. I barely get out of there without breaking down completely. As I drive I do break down, ugly tears and broken words said for my heart’s sake and for God to hear. I drive, unsure of where to go. Before long I find that the Father is leading me down the old familiar streets and the houses of our childhood. Six houses within driving distance and within reach of my memory. He leads me through some of my earliest days, one slow drive-by at a time. He leads me through my boyhood, past the house where my sister flooded the dip in our driveway for us to splash in, and where mom planted strawberries in the front yard. Past our Grandma’s house which burned down and was rebuilt. Past the Primrose house. I stare at the tiny place where the four of us lived right up until a step-dad joined us and took us into some dark years. And the Father reminds me of how He tenderly led us out of those hazy, lost feeling days. I drive down the street where I can remember most clearly being friends with my brother. We ruled that street, we knew all of the neighbor kids. It was the two of us, dreaming up worlds populated by G-I Joes and LEGO’s. It was the two of us, organizing baseball games in the street and instigating night games of hide and seek that ranged up and down, with every kid nearby, in every neighbor’s yard. We rode our bikes all over, to Fred Meyer with black garbage bags bursting with cans, to forts hidden in blackberry jungles, to secret bike jumps along side Beltline Highway. We were brothers there. I drive on to the town that is still ours and I look at the house where we shared an upstairs bedroom, and another where we both finished out high school. And the Father reminds me of the wilderness that he led our family through. Then He reminds me of a talk I had with my brother. We were in Texas for our cousin’s bachelor party and we were riding in the back of someone’s van, maybe on our way to another bar. It was late and I don’t recall everything we said. But I remember telling Peter that I was very proud of him and naming the reasons why. I felt clumsy as I tried to express it, but I had a tremendous desire to give my brother something I felt he needed. I realize now, even as I write this that I wanted to give my two-years-younger brother a father’s blessing. I wouldn’t have called it anything like that at the time but that is certainly what I wanted for him. It was something neither of us ever really had. It wasn’t mine to give, still I hope with all my heart that my brother received it for what it was meant to be, something to carry with him, something to hold on to. Something better than what old Isaac gave. That sad patriarch who had two hands with which to give, and two sons, but whose eyes were blinded by scarcity. While the Father brings the memory of that talk back to me, he reminds me also that all those memories that have been haunting me, all of the harsh words I ever gave my brother, all of the ways I tried to differentiate myself from him, when I was that hurting middle child, desperate to establish for myself some unique and valuable identity. The stupid fights, the competition. They all came before that blessing, and never afterwards. After that night I only remember inviting him to come back home, to be my brother again.
God what a hard day.
But now, as I’m holding tight to this reordering, this vital chronology which I must keep remembering. And now, as July gathers in and summer’s cadence shifts us toward celebrations and laughter, this loss still aches underneath. And I am still not strong enough to satisfy the questions, or to carry the sadness, or to ignore the incoming anger.
Now, there are two kinds of surrender, one of despair and one of hope. We will all make our surrenders at some time, in one direction or another. And the truth is we do this in some form every day of our lives. I don’t know perfectly how God sorts things out after that final hope-filled, or else desperate surrender, but I know which one is better. I always tried to leave doors open for my brother. There was always a place waiting for him at our table. I didn’t do enough though, none of us ever do enough. But there is one who has done, and is doing more than enough. And it is to Him, and His unfathomable goodness that I must now surrender my brother.
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