The Death of Imagination

So about that call to my sister-in-law...

Monday morning about 7 a.m. she texted me. The last time she texted me was last November when we were all in STL for dad's third memorial, so I knew something was up. She started with the words "Everything is going to be ok" which is one of the more alarming sentences to read out of the blue.

What was not OK was that my brother went cycling in San Diego (she's there for a conference and he decided to tag along) and got struck by a car coming back from Point Loma. He doesn't remember what happened so details are sketchy, but his helmet was split open and he still had a skull fracture, so it must have been pretty bad. By the time she gave me the news, however, he was about to have his soft collar removed. He texted a picture of himself wearing it while cracking Darth Vader jokes.

If all goes well, they'll fly back Friday. By coincidence, Friday night was when we were scheduled to get together for dinner. That only came about because of a brunch conversation with my cousins on Pride Weekend where I confessed we hadn't seen each other all year and my cousin Rich called us "pathetic". bunj had actually offered me the 8th and I turned it down for some reason (probably having to do with some dumb boy).

After talking to my SIL and getting a more-or-less complete account of everything from the police investigation to the strings she had to pull at the hospital to get him moved, I called my sister, asked her to fill in our mom, and then called my stepmom. It was only then, after I really knew how close a call it was, that it occurred to me: If things had worked out slightly differently--if he hadn't been wearing his helmet, for instance--Friday might have been my brother's funeral and he'd have died without seeing me for nearly seven months.

I confess, the implications haven't really sunk in yet. Thanks to my role as intermediary (my SIL asked me to phonetree for her yesterday), I'm still compartmentalising somewhat. It probably won't be until I see him finally that it will become real for me how close I came to going from having two brothers in 2019 to having no brothers in 2022.

Most of this year, I've had this vague feeling of having let down my family and good friends in order to go out and drink with bar buddies. My logic is that this is good time to do that, while I'm still in good health and have a sex drive, but of course the underlying assumption that whenever I get tired of this, they'll be around still ready to see me is faulty. My stepmom said at least two or three times, "I miss you". She's in her 70s and diabetic. Nuphy is almost 80 and I still keep putting off getting together with him. Time to do something about that.

When Sis called Sunday, it had been nearly a month since we'd last talked, so a chunk of our conversation was about the contrast between what we'd thought we might get done during our confinement and how we're actually spending our time. She's doing more watching and less reading than she thought, but that doesn't surprise me because I always remember what mollpeartree said about watching the most television when her job was more exhausting, and keeping five boys busy in a twelve-room house has got to be pretty tiring.

I'm glad she reached out because I was--perhaps predictably--feeling pretty down. I saw other friends posting about family video chats and realised that, not only had we failed to organise anything similar, but that none of my family had reached out to me weeks. Right when things blew up, I called both mothers to check on them, plus my sister, and texted my brother, and that was the last I heard from any of them. I know we're pretty atomised, but I've long treasured how we pull together in a crisis. But not this crisis I guess.

Sis told me Mom is getting pretty restless, which hardly surprises me, and that she can't go anywhere because she let the battery in her car die, which surprises me even less. Our stepmom, at least, has neighbours to visit with. I know she's as thankful as I am that Dad isn't around for this mess; having him in a home right now would send everyone's anxiety through the roof.

The next day, I finally got around to checking my mail again. I don't expect much these days, but I had ordered a book from friends' shuttered bookshop in the hopes of keeping it afloat. I wasn't there but I found an unexpected package that turned out to be a handsewn mask from my SIL. I wore it day after for a walk with friends. I say a walk; what actually happened is that we rendezvoused on one street corner, went a block, and then made a loose pentagram while we yelled a conversation. Once we started getting chilly, everyone went their separate ways.

So I guess we're just going to see how long we can survive on this strange mix of online socialisation, phone and video calls, and kinda getting together but not really. Illinois is expecting the peak in hospitalisations to crest soon but it's not clear what happens after that in the absence of a proven course of therapy and testing regime, much less a vaccine.

Another good solid weekend.

It began Friday evening with a sushi date with my new pal Tora. He's someone Puff had been urging me to meet for a while. He was at Sad Cub's birthday brunch but we didn't get to talk. Shortly after that, he hit a rough patch and Puff suggested I contact him so I did and we got pretty flirty pretty quickly. Friday, though, he seemed distracted, which was a little disheartening.

Though he liked Sea Ranch, the best part of the meal was dessert. We went to Frío for gelato and, being the only customers, struck up a conversation with the lone server, who was more than willing to entertain our chatter about varieties of Spanish. I found out he has a Mexican ex and is conversational in the language, and also speaks French plus a smattering of German. We had a good chat about linguistic interference and all that and then went home separately.

Saturday bunj came over with a couple heirlooms: Dad's shearling coat, boots, and the two duck decoys carved by Grandaddy. I was over the moon about them. They sat on our mantelpiece when I was growing up and I hadn't seen them in decades. Given how badly Dad cared for a lot of his belongings, I'm amazed they're in such good shape. I didn't get any cleaning done but I was madly clearing space on my mantelpiece so I could ensconce them in a place of honour the moment I'd unwrapped them.

We walked over to Dak for bibimbap and wings and on the way bumped into Lynchpin and his cronies. After lunch, I took him to the lakeshore at Berger Park and was surprised how torn it up it was from last wee's big storm. The rocks look beautiful, though, like they'd been glacéed, and the saplings near shore were coated in ice to the thickness of pool noodles. I took some pictures and walked him back where we broke into the sherry-aged Redbreast I'd given him for his birthday. Then I did laundry and tried to read.

Nuphy had called on Saturday. We'd had a nice chat and then he'd proposed dim sum Sunday morning so I roped in Mozhu and met them at Ming Hin in South Chinatown. It wasn't half as packed as I'd anticipated and we managed to stuff ourselves without going overboard. Probably my favourite thing was the trio of custard tarts (green tea, mango, and regular); I kind of wanted to try the dried scallop congee but Mozhu put me off that by telling me scallops are one of the few foods she won't eat "because they have eyes like Paul Newman".

Nuphy took the el with us to Roosevelt and she and I rode back together as far as Belmont. Someplace downtown, we saw a guy shuffle on with a Coke can attached to one foot and a plastic 2-litre attached to the other. I immediately had flashbacks to Unknown Armies but it turned out that they combined with two water bottles filled with sand to form the percussion to accompany his singing.

He didn't have a great voice, but after he sang a French version of "House of the Rising Sun", I was fascinated and moved closer to listen to him. He eventually sang another song in French, prompting me to ask, "Comme s'appelle cette chanson là?" He asked me where I learned my French, I lied, and he confirmed (as I'd suspected) that he was Haitian. I gave him the smallest bill I had larger than a single, which turned out to be a double sawbuck.

Once home, I barely had time to change clothes before heading out again to pick up wine at Independent Spirits and Lyft to the get-together out on the edge of Portage Park. I'm still getting used to shared Lyft; the other passenger said nothing to me at all except to thank me for offering her the middle of the seat for her items and kept her gaze fixed out the window. I just shrugged and read my book.

The most intriguing thing about the townhome was the Looney Toons posters on the wall, including one with Elmer Fudd as Faust; I never did have a chance to ask where they were from. The backyard as bizarre: a completely flat manicured quadrangle of grass without a single planting. Perfect for croquet, but dismal to look at otherwise. The apps were first-rate: despite dim sum, I still had room for cheese.

As per usual, my wine came in at the bottom. At least it received one vote, as opposed to the two which received none (one of which was corked). mikiedoggie gave me a ride back from there to SoFo, where one of the other attendees bought me a Manhattan. After that, I had the Dutch courage to walk up to the cuties who'd been sitting next to us and start a conversation with the youngest of them, who seemed truly enthused to meet me.

Still this was nothing compared to his drunken friend, who appeared suddenly at my elbow asking, "Charles, who's your new friend?" He had a terrific Sout Side eyaccint and a performative demeanour that had me in stitched. I told him I'd buy him a drink when I got back from the john but he thought I was ditching him and bought it himself. When I got back, we had a serious conversations and I gave him my number. When I got home that evening, there was a text saying, "Call me tomorrow".

Somehow this week became very busy.

Pasillero got in touch on Sunday asking if we could meet on Tuesday instead of Wednesday or Monday. I agreed, even though it meant bumping a visit to the Christkindlmarket with my brother, because I'm not sure when our next opportunity might be. Next week I have oral surgery and then the trip to St Louis for the funeral, which I don't return from until Tuesday. And then the following week is Christmas.

I needed to hit the Christkindlmarket because tonight I'm playing St Nicholas. (He can't make his rounds tomorrow morning because of an appointment with the grief counselor.) Monday got fucked up, so I thought I'd go Wednesday instead--the one day bunj wasn't available. I figured I'd need some additional motivation so I invited along a friend.

On Monday evening, Pasillero got in touch again and asked to move our date to Wednesday and I was like, seriously? So I put my foot down. I definitely made it worth his while, but afterwards I sleep especially badly. (Isn't that the opposite of what's supposed to happen?) Fortunately, I had my additional motivation who also functioned as the crowd lubricant I really needed.

Bomber, let's call him, has been a tremendous help lately. He seroconverted sometime early this year and only recently came out about it, so I reckoned that he'd be someone who could listen to my worries without being either dismissive or judgmental. He was way more supportive than that, offering to come with my while I got tested and take me out afterwards.

So buying him a cheesy brat and a Glühwein was the very least I could do to say "thanks". I've never seen him not in a great mood and he stripped away all the chore-like aspects to my errand. We even lingered to look at Räuchermännchen and other kitsch.

It left me in a wonderful mood that survived the el ride home but sadly fell victim to some family business. Before leaving work, I received an e-mail notification that my father's FB login had been changed, so I sent his wife a quick text to confirm it was her. When I got home, I took a moment to listen to her voicemail and finally ended up calling her.

If she did change it, she didn't remember; judging from her inability to change it again with the account open in front of her and me leading her by the hand, there's no way it could've been her. Who else would have? No idea, but fortunately I managed to change it myself this morning.

Tomorrow I have nothing planned but I'm toying with the idea of getting a haircut, since that's also something which needs to happen before the service. Otherwise it will probably be staying in, doing laundry, and trying to get the house cleaned up for nocturnal guests on Saturday.

So I finally got an invitation from my brother for Thanksgiving. It arrived two hours ago. I mean, I knew he was hosting, but he hadn't actually told us what time to show up. I've barely heard from him in a week. Meanwhile I've been talking to either my sister, my mom, or my stepmom on the phone almost every day.

I'm assuming he's busy in his new role at a new firm, but it's frustrating. After he raised the possibility of having the family Thanksgiving here, I reached out to him about having it catered. He seemed amenable, we discussed options--and next thing I knew he announced "e. and are cooking everything and you need to bring salad and rolls". I'm still miffed at that--being assigned the least interesting parts of the meal. I'd even offered to make Monshu's cranberry relish in order to have him present in some way and he was like, "We'll take care of the cranberry sauce,"

Needless to say, this has all dampened my interest in contributing at all. I researched some ideas I liked but I've been stymied trying to obtain the ingredients. Why is radicchio so damned hard to find in Chicago? You can get bits of it in a bag of mixed greens at virtually any place with food but whole heads of it are rarer than chicken sashimi. I'm tempted to just show up with a bag of mesclun greens and be like, "Here ya go."

Whatever I do, I'll have to run out for supplies tonight. Which is fine except Mom is showing up to stay with me and she doesn't have keys. We talked last night; she agreed to text me when she left St Louis, then again after her meal stop. Either she's leaving ridiculously late (not out of the question) or she decided not to. Not "forgot", because if it was important to her she could have found the opportunity, but decided she didn't owe me that courtesy.

I know that by this time tomorrow, this will have all ceased to matter. I'll just be happy to have them around me. Even the food won't matter that much. But right now I'm bored at work and anxious. Can't we just skip all the prep and get to the fun part?

So it only took about 36 hours between my father's death and my first anxiety dream about it.

I was in a hospital waiting area with Nuphy, trying to help my sister revise the obituary before the noon deadline. But none of my devices (I had a phone and some kind of tablet) was letting me log in to view it. Meanwhile, my mother was trying to schedule some kind of procedure. This is presumably why at some point I was being paged, which I didn't notice until Nuphy pointed it out. But I couldn't figure out who I needed to speak to at which counter and no one was coming forward to assist me.

The only part of that which mirrored reality was that my sister did have a noon deadline to submit the obituary. I got to work hoping she'd have a draught ready for me to review (they'd composed it longhand the day before and she said something about having our stepsister type it up) but she didn't e-mail it to me until 11:23 a.m. Mom was included (for some reason, our stepmom had omitted her from an earlier version) but Monshu wasn't and I advised her that the names of the places where he studied and taught would really be useful if, say, any former classmates or students wanted to attend the service.

This is both harder and easier than my brother's death. At least it didn't come out of the blue; he'd been declining for a couple years. But it wasn't until Thursday that I learned he'd taken a turn for the worse. He'd been in rehab so I'd assumed he was getting a higher standard of care than usual, but there's some suggestion that the staff screwed up his medications, kickstarting his kidney failure. (I don't know if his wife plans to litigate, but she did demand a copy of all his charts and medical records at the facility before taking him to the ER.)

Coming on the heels of M's death and shortly before the third anniversary of Monshu's is also a mixed bag. Part of me is like, "Let's just get this all over with in one go". And we're all prepared. When Mom showed up to help out my sister on Saturday, she brought the checklist they'd put together for my brother. We're even using the same venue. (My neighbour and I even joked about just pasting dad's picture over my brother's on the programmes and even using the same songs.)

It's a little more complex this time because my stepmother has her own children who--to be frank--have been kind of shitty to Dad at times. I'm hoping they don't show up with any scores to settle, but you never know in advance how someone's going to react in a time like this.

I started off today with a mental health crisis. At first, I wasn't sure what was happening. Despite getting a full night's sleep for a change, I thought maybe I was still worn out from staying up until 3 a.m. on Saturday. Then I thought maybe it was a cold. All I really knew was that the thought of simply getting up and getting myself ready for work seemed nothing short of overwhelming.

After having my tea and some cold cereal, I e-mailed my boss with the news that I would be in late. Then, as I sat in bed pondering my next move, the cat came and cuddled with me, which led me to try napping. I slept about an hour but woke up to find myself with the same dilemma.

I tried to think of who might be able to help me out of it and messaged my pal Dorkchop, who's a licenced therapist. That was apparently enough to get me out of bed and into the shower. Reading his encouraging responses brought tears to my eyes. I guess it comes as a pleasant surprised to find there's someone that invested in whether I make it out of the house or not.

I still dithered for another hour trying to figure out what to wear, since my plan was to attend the opera with my brother bunj after work. I tried on two pairs of shows, two pairs of slacks, a vest and a suit jacket. After all that, I'd narrowly missed the 12:26 shuttle to work and ended up taking the 12:55, so what with leaving early, I'll only end up logging about three hours at my desk.

It's going to be a long three hours, I can tell. I still have that puppety feeling, like I'm a little person holed up inside a big person suit that I operate by strings. At least it was the push I needed to finally contact the Center for Grief Recovery and see about an appointment. (No response yet.)

As for what set it off, I'm not really sure, but it may have something to do with my phone call with my sister Sunday night. We're finally at a point with dealing with M.'s apartment and Dad's rehab woes (today may be his last paid day) that we could talk a bit about how we're coping with the grief. She was saying it "dribbles through" rather than coming in a flood. Maybe this is just a slightly bigger leak than I've dealt with so far.

Yesterday I spoke with Mom for the first time since she dropped us at the airport Sunday night. She sounded alright so I broached the subject of grief counseling. She tells me she isn't ready to join any sort of support group but that she is going to see about finding a better psychiatrist. I was touched to hear that the two who had most recently treated my brother (one decided to leave private practice to become a hospitalist) reached out to her to offer their sympathies.

She also said something which echoes what I've heard from others: "I take comfort in the fact that at least he's not suffering any more." She told me that my sister's response to hearing that was, "I can't do that." I have to say, I'm with my sister in this regard. "At least he's not suffering anymore" is something you tell the survivors when someone dies of a terminal illness. I heard it when my husband died of incurable cancer three years ago. But their situations didn't have much in common.

Monshu's condition left him bedridden and dependent on IV feeding. By contrast, my brother lived independently, getting about on his own, cooking for himself, pursuing hobbies, and even going out on the town now and again. That's the kind of life Cameron had after his symptoms started but before his unsuccessful second operation: subject to certain limitations (restricted travel, hospitalisations), but otherwise much like mine.

Schizophrenia is serious and chronic, but it's not fatal. It makes one more likely to die by suicide or be killed by police. A substantial percentage end up homeless with the associated increase in health risks. On average, people with schizophrenia die about 15 years earlier than members of the general population. But nobody dies *from* schizophrenia. The leading causes of death for people with schizophrenia are still heart disease and cancer, just like they are for the rest of us.

Amid all the talk about how M.'s life was limited by schizophrenia (and it was a big subject at the memorial), what I wish everyone would remember is how much it *didn't* limit him. He had bad days and even weeks when he didn't really leave his place; so do I, honestly. But he also went to movies, parties, lectures, family events, etc. He came on family vacations and made trips around the USA with my mom. All around his apartment, I found evidence of the fun things he'd done, was doing, or was planning to do.

I'm sorry that's not comforting. It's not comforting to know that all of us could die at any time, whether we're in the prime of life or struggling just to survive the day. But I find it less comforting to talk about living with a chronic disability as little better than not living at all.

Saturday's memorial went off without a hitch. Dad was there, broken ankle and all, and the rest of us made it through our eulogies without losing it (thought it was a close thing). The outreach director for the local chapter of the Ethical Society conducted the service and, though he did a good job, he did get a couple things dead wrong about my brother.

He tried to be a little clever and work in M.'s love of gaming by means of a little discussion of D&D alignments. After explaining the two axes, he said, "M. was Chaotic Good." It got a good response, but it's not accurate. M.'s presentation was often chaotic because of the symptoms of his disease, but his orientation was solidly Lawful.

He cared about rules and he cared about "doing things right". Dad used to rely on him for proofreading because he'd internalised so well the rules of standard English punctuation and grammar we'd been taught. Among his most personal effects[*], I found a consent form for sex and a letter of apology to an escort offering her 10% of her fee for "wasting her time" (presumably, negotiating without coming to an arrangement).

But this was most starkly shown in how he kept house. In his remarks, the Director called it a "treasure trove" and hinted that it was untidy. Let me tell y'all: even at the height of my anxious repressed-homo perfect-boy childhood, I never kept my room as neat and organised as M.'s apartment. His system was evident everywhere, from the precise labeling and sorting of his RPG materials to the disposition of his kitchen to the many post-its and handwritten notes[**] surrounding his personal computer.

In a neat pile at the foot of the recliner, I found a device for converting cassettes to MP3s sitting atop the instructions and packaging it came in and next to a cassette tape of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. It was such a perfect snapshot of a project in process that I took a photo. We could tell from the neat arrangement of quarters and detergent pods on his coffee table that he was just about to do laundry.

My sister speculated that he needed everything carefully ordered to stay atop of the unpredictable effects of his disease. But he was always like this, from childhood on. Maybe because he was already fighting the disease or maybe it was his response to our chaotic earlier home life. (My sister only remembers moving once before high school; as Mom pointed out in her eulogy, we moved four times before M. was 7 years old.) Or maybe that was just how he was wired.

Regardless, it was how he lived. Going through his papers to find the few we wanted to keep for sentimental reasons before evaluating the rest for potential donation felt like a form of defilement, like pulling apart one of the Lego structures he'd so carefully assembled over the years or wrecking one of his carefully-considered plans with a few inconvenient facts.


[*] Can't tell you how glad I am to have stumbled upon these before my sister or my mother. They're buried at the bottom of a tall kitchen garbage bag now.
[**] The most poignant of these to me was one that said:

Swedish
Greta Thunberg
16 yrs old

Clearly he was prepping to participate in discussions of current events.

I slept remarkably well last night. Given my background level of anxiety, I thought I might need a Lorazepam to sleep through, so I was much relieved. I think talking helped. The boys let me go on about M. for an hour or so and it was cathartic to talk about his struggles without worrying any longer that I was violating his privacy.

I put some of them into a post to FB since I realised that a lot of what I have to say about him (and people are encouraging me to keep writing and posting) doesn't make sense without that background. The response was overwhelming. Several others shared their challenges with people close to them with schizophrenia and my sister asked to share the post because it expressed some of the things she's been wanting to communicate to her friends.

I ended it with a shout-out to my siblings:

Our parents always told us, “M. isn’t your responsibility; he isn’t your child.” We nodded, but secretly all three of us were conscious of the day when they’d be gone and we’d need to take up the slack. We shared intel and supported each other during his various relapses. Hardly a week went by in nearly thirty years that we weren’t all three in touch with him.

Because I really am proud of that. M. frustrated us all at times so beyond checking in with him, we tried to check in with each other and make sure if someone was getting fatigued, we'd work to give them a break. It still ended up falling too heavily on my sister as the one literally closest to him (being less than three kilometers away) but bunj and I tried.

For my next installment, I want to talk about some of the fun things about him. Because of the effects of illness on his social development, in some ways he stayed an adolescent his whole life. This was part of what made him difficult, but it had its endearing aspects.