My Brother's A Keeper

“…see some old friends, good for the soul…”

-Bob Seger, “Hollywood Nights”

I ran into an old friend this past week in Orlando.  When I say I ran into him, I mean he was waiting for me at the airport.  My wife pointed in the direction of a guy I’d never seen before.  It turned out I was looking at the wrong guy and didn’t see my brother, Eric, until I damn near bumped into him.

Though we were born to the same parents and lived in the same house for sixteen years, we’ve seen each other only sporadically since.  I was off to college and then he was off to college out-of-state, and then I was married and raising kids and then he was married and raising hell and…if you’re my age, you probably know what I’m talking about.  Both of us loved theatre arts and our chosen career paths took us in opposite directions.  My path was writing for the stage while he was still accepting the audience’s applause as a musical theatre performer.  His choice took him around the world and placed him in front of tens of thousands of people.  My choice led to the dining room, where I wrote words I hoped an actor would one day speak.

We saw each other when I visited him in Findlay, Ohio once or twice, Cincinnati a couple of times, Key West once.  Between jobs he dropped into Michigan to visit our parents and at various times met my wife, my first child, and later my second child.  It sounds ludicrous, but somehow, twenty years go by, then twenty-five. 

The only visit of any length we had during that period was when the entire family, including my parents and children, cruised on a ship where Eric was the entertainment director.  He had found his calling, it seemed.  His job was making sure everybody that crossed his path was having a good time.  From my personal experience, he was very good at it.  If he was going to be at an event on the ship, we made sure to be there.  If it was Karaoke, we attended and sang our (off-key) hearts out.  If it was doing the Macarena on the back deck, we stumbled through that, too.  Eric was always the funniest of us all, the first name you would put on the list of party invitees. 

When we stepped on the cruise ship, Eric’s marriage had just ended.  He was seeing a lovely young lady named Renee whom we liked instinctively, yet…when a relationship is brand new, and you’re worried that your children might get attached to a person you DON’T REALLY KNOW, you don’t go all in.  We hoped for the best, for both of them.

This is how you bump into your brother in an airport and don’t immediately know who he is.  I’m not saying that’s right.  That’s just how it was.

Life had taken a swerve for Eric and Renee.  The cruise ship regimen lasted for a few years, but constantly being on the water, unable to get away from the hard-partying vacationers, the grind ultimately took its toll.  After a period of years, the now-married couple settled in Orlando, with Eric finding work as an entertainment director on land, where he got to go home every night.  Renee followed her muse and developed a following in dance instruction.  While they were driving stakes into the ground in the Sunshine State, my children were growing up and leaving the house.  An unexpected burst of creativity lifted me back onto the stage as a writer and a performer. We were certainly aware of what was happening in the other’s life, but had precious little time to appreciate it.  There was a period of time where only one of us was on top of the world at any given moment.  If something cool was happening for him, I was scrambling for money in Michigan.  If I had my picture in the paper in Ann Arbor, he was moving from one rental to another.  It was a brutal cycle.

Last week, after we met at the airport, Eric and Renee took us to the land-locked resort where he holds court.  The respect and friendship I saw on the faces of the people he works with was palpable.  Kath and I cruised through his fiefdom treated, not like the King and Queen perhaps, but certainly a Lord and Lady.  For a couple still putting one kid through college, it was a royal reception.  We ate dinner at one of the restaurants on the property and on Sunday morning Eric and I made breakfast side-by-side in the suite he put us up in.  We had talked late into the night about where we had been and what we had seen.  I searched his face for clues of who he had become, wondering if this is the same guy I took baths with more than forty-five years ago.  Even the sound of his voice was somewhat strange to me.

Again, I know I sound ridiculous.  He’s my brother, of course I know him!  Yeah, but not really.  I’m not the same person I was five years ago. Even the last year has changed me irrevocably. I am now at a point in my life where I have cohabitated with my wife long than any other person.  So, Eric and I patty-caked through the weekend, loath to somehow offend the other, talking about everything and nothing, with the sound and fury of the Florida attractions serving as white noise.

We’ve both slowed down a bit.  I’ve passed fifty and Eric stands on the welcome mat.  We’ve both had some minor health issues in the last year and we each take a handful of pills in the morning.  When we went to the amusement park on Monday, we did not arrive before it opened with a plan to stay until the gates closed.  We used sunblock and re-applied throughout the day.  We wore hats on our bald heads.  We found out which rides each person wanted to experience and when we’d accomplished that, we left, eating a nice dinner outside the park.  It was barely sunset when we got back to their place.

We were given a hero’s welcome at the door by Eric and Renee’s three lap dogs.  After the loss of Flash this fall (see: http://cuttingadeadmanstoenails.blogspot.com/2016/08/day-one-august-18-2016.html), for Kath and I it was a balm for our souls to have some animals to play with.  The pooch that seemed to take to us most was a Chihuahua mix named Phoebe, who was so butch in her manner I took to calling her ‘Bruiser’.  Of course, I called her by this macho nickname while cuddling her in my lap.

As I am an anthropomorphist from way back, at some point I began using the dog as my puppet, speaking for her in a menacing Mexican accent, asserting her dominance over the other dogs.  Eric responded in kind, pledging mayhem from the other side of the room, both of us using the dogs as surrogates, creating characters and scenarios on the fly.  This went on for (maybe) five minutes, but when it was over, the distance between my brother and I was gone, too.  It was just like the old days.  By Wednesday, I had returned to my former role of instigator-in-chief (also known as senior shit stirrer), goading the others into turning the final presidential debate into a drinking game.  Eric gamely joined me and later regretted it…again, just like the old days.

But as I laid in bed on Monday night, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself.  I thought of the child psychologists that use dolls or puppets to help their young charges express things that are difficult to talk about.  In a manner of speaking, a pair of Totos had revealed the men behind the curtain.  Neither of us had managed to become the Great and Powerful Oz, but with the amount of smoke and mirrors, we certainly had some folks fooled…and some, for a long time.

By the end of the week, we were talking in concrete terms about when and how we would get together again.  We were also wielding the needle in that way siblings have, finding and exploiting weak spots to maximum advantage.  I can say shitty things about my brother, but I wouldn’t recommend you trying it.

I just might sic Bruiser on you.

A Cry For Yelp

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’ve read mentions of our old hound, Flash, that patrolled our back yard for the last fourteen summers.  Three years ago, he began to go into decline, with a steep drop in function that started last winter.  Three weeks ago, I had him put to sleep.

If you have read my new blog, “Cutting a Dead Man’s Toenails”, you know the whole story behind our decision to let Flash go.  I would like to thank those of you that clicked on that.  It has, to date, been read by four times as many people as my next-most-popular post.  It seemed to strike a chord in people, making them look back on their own experience of letting a beloved pet go, or look forward to the day when they would have to make that difficult decision for their animal(s).

Some folks were deeply touched, imagining my pain or feeling that I recognized theirs.  Some people thought it was a ridiculous exercise in sentimentality, worthless as anything but a vehicle for my own grief.  I felt I was reporting on an event as it unfolded over the course of eleven days, albeit in a very personal way.  A reader may have thought I revealed too much, giving a voyeuristic picture into my family’s private moments.  I will only defend that point by saying that my family is quite used to hearing their words repeated verbatim, with their successes and foibles made public for all to see.  Fair or not, they are never shocked to find parts of their lives in print.  It’s one of the things you get used to when you are related to a writer.

I won’t deny that I wrote “…Toenails” to deal with my own emotional turmoil.  I told a friend of mine, Tammy, that I often write about difficult experiences in my life to gain perspective and, sometimes, when a life event doesn’t come out well, I will write a piece of fiction that corrects the bad outcome. But the main reason I wrote the blog was to tell pet owners facing a euthanization that there is a better way to do it than going to an impersonal clinic and driving home with a body in the car, or, perhaps worse, alone, no longer accompanied by your longtime companion.  The drive, both ways, is excruciating.  The procedure itself is painful enough for the pet owner, but crying while steering a 2,000 pound vehicle through traffic could cause a whole different kind of human anguish.

I had the conversation with Tammy at her father’s funeral.  When she told her friends about his passing, she wrote that she had prayed the very morning he died that she would not prolong his suffering when the time came.  That he passed quickly and in his sleep (in his Lazy Boy) was an answer to that prayer.  Of course, the loss of a parent and the death of a house pet are similar only at the basest level, but both sometimes require us to make level-headed decisions that leave our own complicated emotions out of the equation.

At my house, we still tear up at times, missing that sweet animal that saw a goodness in his humans that is often hard for us, with our complex brains, to remember.  This morning, pulling out a rarely used dining room chair, I found a cushion edged with fur that had apparently been in Flash’s way when he made a shortcut between the kitchen and the back door. Kath turns into a puddle when she’s preparing food and there’s no one in the doorway patiently waiting for a dropped tidbit.  But we know we made the right call.  He was facing little beyond pain and confusion going forward, losing interest in most everything but sleep.  A scratch behind the ears is a wonderful thing, I suppose, but it wasn’t a reason to keep living.  Here’s the thing…a human who is lucky enough to be lucid and communicative at the end of their life has a chance to tell you, “Let me go.”  They can tell you the pain is too much, or that they don’t want to fight anymore.  Your pet can’t do it.  They’ll just keep going because YOU want them to.  They’ll do anything for you.  You are their whole life.

On the human end, who among us doesn’t wish for a quick, painless death, like the one Tammy’s father had?  Many of us live our whole lives in fear of the end, placing hopes on an outcome we likely won’t control.  We can hedge our bets by adding codicils to our wills, or inking ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ tattoos on our chests.  Again, our pets don’t have this option.  We have to hear what the veterinarian says and listen with an open mind.  We have to remember that there is a responsibility in pet ownership, and one of those duties is to end the suffering when it becomes too much.

Home euthanization for your animals is a thing now.  If you are facing the end of your pet’s life, please consider this as an option for their benefit and for your own.  Make some phone calls, ask your friends.  You’d think that the cost might be a lot higher, but it’s not.  The mobile vet usually doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar workplace that they are paying for, nor a receptionist that needs a weekly paycheck.  Talk to them about your situation.  Don’t be offended if they ask you about what you’ve done to safeguard your animal’s health.  This is their job.  They do not want to put an animal to sleep that can be saved.

When Flash passed, he was in his favorite place, surrounded by friendly faces.  There was no stressful drive, no panoply of dog smells to ponder on his way to the exam room.  There was no painful lift to a cold, metal table.  He laid in his own bed, on his own back porch as the sedative took effect.

In a particularly cruel twist, Tammy had been tasked with putting her father’s dog to sleep just weeks before his passing.  But, as she told me at the funeral, “If you’re not willing to do that when it’s necessary, you shouldn’t own a dog.”  I can only echo her sentiments.

I can’t pretend that I understand Tammy’s pain.  My father is alive and mostly well.  As a writer, I try to speak only of those things I know.  I know how difficult it is to let your family pet go.  Doing it at home was as peaceful and as humane as anything I have ever done and I place it among the best decisions I ever made.

By the way, I asked Tammy before I posted this if I could use her name.  And my mother, a retired minister, delivered her father’s eulogy.  It was funny and sentimental, just like my posts about Flash.  At 1500 words, it was just about perfect.  It was 6000 words less than my eulogy for Flash, so the attendees should be grateful that I did not inherit my verbosity from her.  She didn’t have to say as much, because for 76 years, Tammy’s father spoke for himself. 

I wrote a volume because our animals can’t speak for themselves.  Your aging pet can’t tell you what they need.  Please…when you can’t end the pain, end the suffering.

The Empty Nest

The deck we built on the back of our house turned two on Memorial Day.  My wife and I waited so long to get one, though it was on our minds from the day we moved in eighteen years ago.  Dan turned two that first summer and Lucy started school that fall.  Obviously there were a lot of expenses with the children and both Kathy and I had just started new careers.  Finally, in 2014, we had the money at a time when no other big-ticket items were breaking down.

Fortunately, we’ve enjoyed it as much as we hoped we would.  After a long day at work, it is the place I want to be in warm weather.  Frequently, my wife will find me there when she gets home at five-thirty. I’ve changed out of my work clothes and enjoyed an adult beverage by then.  Flash, the geriatric guard dog, stands sentry at the back steps, occasionally rising to walk his beat, peering through his cloudy cataracts at threats both real and imagined.

What I had not anticipated was the amount of time we would spend in complete silence, just enjoying the breeze and the sounds of nature.  Our television alternative in those quiet hours is an Art Fair birdhouse, built for the small, picked-on members of the avian community.  Its tiny aperture is ringed by metal decorations, so the larger birds don’t peck away a larger entry and consume the eggs or baby birds.  A pair of wrens moved in and started a family. We watched avidly as a Real Housewife of Washtenaw County brought bedding and sustenance to her young, while Daddy perched nearby, putting the fear of God into any creature that ventured too close (Kathy included).  We waited eagerly for the big day, when we would see the young wrens emerge and leave the nest.

That is not to say this was the only bird family in the yard.  There were many.  One family we had to shoo away, as the piercing sound of blue jays at dawn was more than my wife and I wanted to hear.  When they attempted…several times…to build a nest under the eaves outside our bedroom window, we impeded their progress.  When they didn’t get the hint, we stuck a small mirror in the place they kept returning to.  The reflection of ‘another’ blue jay in their preferred spot finally made them move elsewhere. 

There was also a nest of robins near the porch, the adults robust and industrious.  The cacophony from their family room rivaled a euchre game at my parent’s house.  Because of their size, their sound and fury, you tended not to worry about the robins.  But sometimes appearances are deceiving.

While we were still waiting to see the baby wrens, we saw one of the baby robins laying on the ground, near the trunk of the tree.  It was clearly not fully mature, its feathers still of the fluffy, white variety, though its body was of a fair size.  The adult robins seemed concerned, but not overly so.  They would perch nearby and look at the baby pleading for help before returning to the task of feeding the rest of their young in the nest.

Any of you that know me are aware that I am no ornithologist.  In fact, my idea of ‘outdoorsy’ would be a day game at Comerica Park.  But I didn’t want to sit there and watch the little robin die.  We have always used laundry detergent that is fragrance-free, so I slipped on a pair of latex gloves and found a T-shirt we used as a rag and wrapped it around the errant nestling.  The adult robins watched with interest, but nothing more.  My thinking was, if this bird is just a day or so away from flying, maybe it has a chance, if the adults will feed it.  We beckoned the dog inside and waited, peeking out the window, watching for cats and other predators.  At around dusk, our patience was rewarded.  The robins began bringing food to the bird on the ground.  Our spirits buoyed, we went to bed hopeful.   

Alas, it was not to be.  The temperature sank to fifty-seven degrees that night and there was dew on the ground.  The cold had claimed the baby bird.  Though we’d known there was little chance that we could interfere with the cruelty of nature, we were glad we had tried.  We mused on the corollaries to human parenting.  Though we rarely see emotion from non-domesticated animals, we wondered if they remember the ones they have to leave behind for the safety of the others, while discussing the human parents who’ve had to make tough decisions.   At the moment a child is born, we hope and pray that our baby isn’t taken from us by violence, a random illness, an accident, or an ill-timed, poorly planned escapade.  Yet it happens.  Every day, good parents bury children.  The next day they have to get out of bed and take care of their other children and themselves.  Cruelty of nature, indeed.

A couple of days passed, as well as the mini-funk we were in over the baby robin.  That was when we noticed that the wrens were gone.  Gone!  As in, not a trace.  The birdhouse was intact, with nothing but fluff left inside.  No signs of violence were seen.  The family had decamped, leaving no forwarding address.  While we’d watched and worried over the baby robin, another family had moved on.  Perhaps one morning before I was even out of bed, Mama Wren had announced that ‘today’s the day’ and marched her young charges to the door of their house, imploring them to do what they had been born to do, and they did it.  When everything happens as it is supposed to, we seldom take notice, do we?

A month has gone by since then.  Though it is still mid-summer, the shadows have shifted subtly, suggesting that this year will be like the last.  The leaves will fall, the air will chill and next year the cycle will begin again.  But something will be different in our human nest next year, as our baby bird prepares to take flight, testing his wings, applying knowledge both learned and inherited.  We feed them, we warm them, we teach them to the limit of our abilities and watch them go. It is heartbreaking and heartwarming.  The idea is foreign to us at times, and yet it is what we were born to do.

I found a wren feather on the ground near their old house and stuck it in the brim of my hat.  I suppose you could call it a feather in my cap.  I may watch from the sidelines feigning disinterest or I may chirp my disapproval on the wire.  But I will never forget the precious gifts that came from my wife’s eggs, nor will I forget the wonderful times we had in our nest.  Freebird, fly!