My Brother in Five Stages

 

2024

“What did he mean to you?” my therapist asks me about my brother.

“Well, I guess, he was the closest thing I had to a dad,” I respond.

“But that must’ve been complicated.”

“A little, the age gap made it easy—19 years.” I pause. But that drug addiction.

“Where did you go?” My therapist brings me back. I must’ve paused longer than I thought.

“I was just thinking . . . um.” I feel the tears behind my eyes. “The drug addiction really made things hard.”

2010

Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong. My eyes shoot open in my cold, dark room. I hear my mother’s footsteps thump toward the door. She’d always been a heavy walker even though she’s only 4 foot 11. What time is it? My phone tells me it’s 2:37 in the morning. Someone’s dead. No one rings the doorbell this late unless someone is dead. I uncover myself from the blankets ready to find out who died, hoping it’s my grandmother in Florida but knowing that would’ve been a phone call. Don’t judge—she was a horrible human being.

I leap out of bed, look down, and see my blue jeans still on from the day before. I must’ve been really tired. As I enter the hallway of our small duplex I see my sister-in-law’s sister, Elise. She’s said something to my mother, but I don’t know what. My mother runs back past me to the bathroom, cursing under her breath the whole way up the stairs.

“It’s Joey,” Elise says. I wish I can say I remember how she looked in this moment, but I don’t.

“What about him?” I respond.

Elise starts to stumble, “I—I don’t really know. Michelle called.” Michelle is my brother’s wife. Elise continues, “He’s in the hospital, I don’t really know what’s going on, we tried calling you but you didn’t pick up, so I had to come, and I—” She gets faster as she continues talking, getting louder in volume—I stop listening.

I knew he was already dead. I pull out my phone and text my best friend, Hey, um Joey is in the hospital and might be dead. I’m freaking out.

“THIS FUCKIN KID!” I hear my mother scream from the bathroom “GONNA GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK.” My mother has always been highly reactive and has a way of making everyone’s emotions worse. This was not an indication of his death; she would have reacted this way had my brother stubbed his toe. Why can’t you just keep it together. Why can’t I lose it? My brother is dead! Anger.

The next part is missing. I know we had to drive from my house to the hospital—logically. I have flashes of being on the Verrazano Bridge, my mother cursing. I’ll do anything for him to not be dead. Bargaining. I remember texting my best friend asking, Where are you?! He always answered at odd hours, but not tonight.

2009

We’re standing outside of JFK Airport in March, going to visit the previously mentioned evil grandmother in Florida. I’m shivering. “I told ya you’d need a jacket,” my mom says with all the stank and shame she can muster. We’re only standing outside so she can smoke a cigarette.

“You’re cold?” Joey asks.

“Y-y-y-y-es-s,” I shiver out.

“Come here.”

He wraps his huge bear arms around me and embraces me in the biggest hug I’ve ever received. I wish we could stay here forever.

2010

We arrive at the emergency room and tell the nurse at the front we are here to see my brother; she immediately stands up and takes us through a winding hallway. My mom is practically running, she doesn’t know. But I’m trailing behind, I know. I know I’m in the last moments of my brother being alive. I know once we arrive at our destination there will be a doctor telling me they tried their best. I know my brother’s life hangs in this hallway, and I walk it with dread.

The nurse opens the door to a small room big enough for just the seven of us. We find Michelle sobbing, surrounded by a team of three doctors, one with his arm around her, “I’m so sorry, we tried—”

It’s just like the movies. My hearing goes high pitch. I don’t hear the rest of the doctor’s spiel—I don’t have to. My brother is dead. Acceptance. I feel nothing. I hear nothing. I don’t see the faces of the doctors. I know my mother is crying but I do not see her face.

Either I or someone else moves me toward a chair and I sit down. I stare at the ground, but all I see is blank white sterile hospital tile. I knew he was dead. I felt it.

Why can’t I cry? What’s wrong with me? What will my mother think? Guilt.

“Was he your father?” A doctor sitting between me and the door says. When did he even get here? I look at him but also through him.

I shake my head—“Brother” is all I can squeak out.

At some point my mother and sister-in-law decide to go see my brother’s body. I refuse. I can’t. I won’t. If I don’t see him, he’s still alive. Denial.

“He looks like he’s sleeping, you know,” my mother says.

“I don’t care, I don’t want to see him like that,” I respond.

“You’ll regret not saying goodbye,” she guilts me.

“No, I won’t.”

And I don’t to this day. I knew what was best for me then, and I still know now.

2001

“Jessie, go take off your uniform and put on outside clothes—you’re going out tonight,” my mom tells me as she unlocks the door to our apartment in the four-family building she’s lived in for over twenty-five years.

“But it’s a school night!” I reply in my tiny high pitched six-year-old voice.

 

“Yes, but Joey is coming with a surprise,” she replies indifferently, as if I should’ve known this.

A surprise, this’ll be good! I ran to my room and changed my clothes. Before long Joey appears at the front door. After exchanging a hug and kiss he explains what we are going to do tonight. “Do you know what a concert is?” he asks me.

“Yes!” I respond enthusiastically, “We held a concert at school last month.”

“It’s sorta like that except we’re going to see someone famous.”

“Someone famous?” I respond, feeling my eyes growing three times in size.

“Guess who?”

“Umm,” I hesitate by drawing out the ‘m,’ not wanting to guess incorrectly and be disappointed. But if you knew me when I was six, there was only going to be one answer. I put on a brave face and guess, “Britney Spears?”

“Yes! She’s playing tonight!”

“YAY!” I squeal and jump into his arms.

2010

When we get home it is after five in the morning. “I’m going to sleep,” I declare. I know I won’t sleep but I want to be alone. My mother chain-smokes cigarettes on the couch all morning.

I lie in my soft twin bed staring at the white ceiling, trying to understand what just happened to me. To my brother. I need to call someone. I’ll call my brother, I pulled out my phone—oh wait.

It is already happening. He is already leaving a hole in my life that I will still have fifteen years later.

I should feel something about this. I should cry. Why can’t I cry? Guilt. Why can’t I just fucking cry? Well, if he didn’t die, I wouldn’t have to even cry about it! Anger.

By 6:45 a.m. I am starting to doze off when I hear a voice in the alleyway behind my house. “Hey ladies!” Oh my god the doctors were wrong, he’s back! Denial. I feel my emotions crash, That wasn’t him, and I so badly want him to wake me from this nightmare. Depression.

2009

“What do you mean our flight is fucking cancelled? I only brought enough medication for the week.” What medication is he even referring to, he’s not taking anything? Why not bring more than he needs?

“Well can we rebook?” he asks into the phone.

“All flights up the Eastern Seaboard?” He hangs up the phone with a loud “FUCK!”

“Calm down, Joe,” my mom says, not calming down anyone.

Oh god, that’s not gonna calm him down. Why the fuck did she say that?

“Calm down? No, I can’t fucking calm down.” His voice rising as he continues bellowing—here we go— “Because of this fucking family I need my fucking drugs, and I can’t fucking get my drugs for forty-eight fucking hours and you want me to be fucking calm? And to make matters worse you want us to go back to that bitch of a grandmother?” Well, we agree about that. He screams, “Fuck this. Fuck her! Fuck you. FUCK!” He gets out of the car and slams the door behind him. Fuck.

2010

For me the worst is yet to come. We have to go to the medical examiner’s office and identify my brother’s body.

This is like a horror movie. The office is huge with high ceilings, yet unlit. We were the only ones there—my mother, Michelle, and I—as if no one else in New York City died the night before. The emptiness, echoing like the way death leaves you. Footsteps can be heard reverberating from down the hall, voices in whispers can’t be contained in their conversations. There, of course, is a cat—I swear you can’t make this shit up.

The medical examiner asks us to come to a back room.

We follow him to what I assume is the only room with light.

“I need to warn you: These pictures are graphic. Your loved one will appear to be going through decomposition. This will be difficult for you to see,” he says to my mother and Michelle as he sits across the desk from them—I am situated on a couch behind them.

He pulls a manila envelope out of the desk in which there are two pictures of my brother. Fuck.

Joey looks unnatural. His eyes are half open, you can no longer see the light brown color of his irises, but instead a cloudy gray film covers the open part. One of his eyes is bruised from blood pooling. His tongue is swollen from where the paramedics tried to intubate him, so that it sticks out of his mouth. His lips are so dry they look like they could chip off. His face is ashen. His skin behind his ears near his jaws swollen from the Y incision made by this motherfucker. Anger.

That’s not my brother. Denial.

That’s a monster.

I wish it were me on the table. Bargaining.

2024

“There was a time where I could only think of him as the monster—the autopsy photo,” I say.

“What was that like for you?” my therapist asks but not in that annoying therapist tone—like she’s actually curious.

“I think the picture represented all the bad. The addiction, the anger, the bad memories. It’s like I couldn’t remember the good.”

“And now?”

“The good hurts more.” My voice catches in my throat. “I forgive him for all the shit, you know? I just miss him. I miss what he’s missing out on. It’s been almost fifteen years of my life without him. I don’t know how to deal with that.”

“I’m not sure that hole ever fully closes.” My therapist looks solemn.

“Neither am I.”

 

____

Jess Lettieri is a queer writer and former adjunct lecturer with a passion for creative nonfiction and horror. They explore existential themes and visceral storytelling in their work. An avid reader, they share book reviews on their blog, Cover to Cover, and are currently working on new projects.