Forever 46

If he were still alive, my brother would turn 50 tomorrow.  

My only brother, Scott, loved his birthday falling on Memorial Day weekend as it gave a good excuse for the season’s first big barbecue.  A gifted chef, he was hell on the grill, knowing just when to baste, when to swipe with his secret sauce.  But he was equally good in the kitchen: green beans he’d canned in Mason jars, salsa put up from last year’s tomatoes and peppers, baked beans doctored with brown sugar and bacon, and his favorite corn: Peaches-n-Cream. 

There would also be his red plastic cup filled with bourbon, but busy ripping on ribs, no one begrudged him a drink or two—or three or four. 

 After eating, the next course was fireworks.  Even after shooting a bottle rocket into his eye when he was ten, he didn’t fear the big ones.  He loved being the center of attention as we gathered in lawn chairs to watch him run from the lit fuse before the boom and glitter of stars. 

Then three years ago, just weeks before his birthday, he died in a fiery explosion when he slammed his truck into a tree.

As his drinking got worse, we all feared the day, worrying, as the loved ones of a drunk will do, the word of a crash.  When my sister called to tell me, my first question was whether anyone else had been hurt.  But, no, a single-car collision with a poplar tree on a straight-away less than a mile from his house.  Ironically, he was not drunk when it happened.

He was, however, in terrible health—high blood pressure, heart problems; he’d recently been struggling with abrupt lapses in consciousness.  No one knows what happened.  The trauma was so severe that an autopsy was inconclusive.

Desperate to know something, anything, I walked the route from the place he left the road to the tree; even when he swiped a speed-limit sign that knocked off his side mirror, he didn’t swerve.  I pray there was no pain.

Then he was gone, and I thought of all the things I’d taught him that were gone, too. 

I taught him to cook collard greens.  I taught him to play backgammon.  I taught him to wait for the ashes to turn gray before putting the meat on the grill.  I taught him to play golf.   And I taught him to drink.

He was 18, 19, 20, 21; I was ten years older, and I should have known better.  But I’m no stranger to the bottle’s lure myself.  I was the party sister—or more like the brother he didn’t have.  I’d pop the tops on brews for both of us as we sat around the cabin playing guitar and laughing about our missed shots on the golf course.  I’d pour Jack Daniels over Coke, handing him one after another.  I taught him how to act straight when drunk.  I taught him how to ruin his life.

In the year before his death, I begged him to get help.  “It’s not fun anymore,” he’d say, and I knew exactly what he meant.  But we both kept drinking.

Maybe it’s sad, even pathetic, but I would love one more round of golf, one more game of backgammon, one more plate of ribs, one more beer with my brother. 

If I could change the end, among other things, I would keep him from his car that day.  But I wouldn't change the summers we spent together.  After all, I knew him so much better than most.  I know he cried while watching Independence Day; I know he climbed on top of a golf cart to put a wren back in its nest.  I know the crippling self-loathing behind his jokes.  I know his shame at being an alcoholic. 

But I should have been a better role model; I know that, too.

So what to do this Memorial Day weekend since I won’t be going to a birthday party at my brother’s house?  Maybe I’ll make a little barbecue of my own.  Maybe I’ll dust off the six-string and chord through a few familiar songs.  Maybe I’ll take a celebratory shot from the untouched Jagermeister bottle he left in my freezer four summers ago that I can’t seem to throw away.  Or maybe I’ll drink too much bourbon and cry.