How We End

I want to introduce you to my brother.

Some of you knew him already, but you didn’t know him the way I did – and that’s how it is with anyone, really. We know one another imperfectly, incompletely, and every one of us has only a partial picture of another human being, no matter how much or how little time you have spent with them. When we put them all together, we have a picture of a life. Even that is blurry and fragmented, but we must come together to share those memories to have even part of the whole.

This photo is of Don and me, back when I visited him between semesters my junior year of college. This is when we became friends.

You see, I grew up the baby sister. Don was 6-1/2 years older than I was, so at the outset, we lived in different worlds. And honestly, I’m sure through most of my childhood he thought I was put on this earth to torment him, which is the implied job of any younger sibling. We started out as antagonists, and that was probably mostly my fault.

When I was barely old enough to walk, I snuck into his closet and pooped in one of his shoes.

When I was about 7 or 8, I don’t really recall, he had been harassing me about one thing or another – as siblings do – and I threatened him that if he didn’t stop, I’d take off my nightgown and beat him with it. To this day Mom still tells the story and laughs at the sight of me chasing him through the house, and my very embarrassed brother yelling “MOM! SHE’S NEKKID!”

I was a bit older, maybe 10 or 11, on a bright Saturday morning, when he was holed up under the covers in his basement bedroom trying to sleep in, and I burst into his room waving a banana around over my head and loudly singing a silly tune I’d made up (“HAVE A BANANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”).

This past Wednesday, as I sat next to his hospital bed holding his hand, I told him he was lucky. If I was 10 years old again I’d be taking unflattering photos of him and posting them on Facebook. He laughed. That was a good laugh, and I’ll miss it.

When I was 12, and he was 18 and just starting college, Dad’s job transferred him from Phoenix to Northern California, and he chose to remain behind and go to school in Arizona. I saw him again for his wedding to his first wife, and not a whole lot after that, until that mid-year break when I spent a couple of weeks with him and his wife, and we really got a chance to talk as the people we became as adults.

And I really liked him. I discovered that, mostly without having lived in the same house or spending any time together over the intervening 8 years, we had a lot in common. We’d read a lot of the same books, and enjoyed a lot of the same things, and could hold deep conversations about religion and politics without wanting to throttle each other because there was a respect for one another’s thoughtful decisions and how we could express them. We kind of laughed alike, and we both had developed the habit of pacing in between the refrigerator and the pantry while trying to decide what to have for dinner.

I respected him a lot. His musical talent was… shoot, through the roof. I remember one Sunday, Jason and I were leading worship and we wanted to sing “Oh the Blood of Jesus”, spur of the moment, but hadn’t brought the music with us. So I called him, and asked him if he could tell me the chords. He asked what key we wanted to sing it in. I told him, and then he proceeded to transpose it IN HIS HEAD, on the fly, WHILE DRIVING.

He was smart. Like, scary smart. And he had a way with words – I like to think we were a little alike in that way.

I moved in with him after college graduation for about 6 months while I found a job and saved up enough money for first and last months’ rent… and I was part of the wedding party for his second wedding. I got to babysit his kids when they were small. We spent a lot of time together those first few years after I moved back to Arizona. They were good years. Then he and his family moved to Southern Illinois for a bit, and my life got more interesting because I met my husband.

When they moved back, his life hit a rocky patch. He lived with me and Jason for about 6 months while his family fell apart, and his ex-wife and kids moved away. Without her to insist on our getting together for every holiday and special occasion, we drifted into our own separate circles.

One thing about us, though. We always knew we had each others’ back. Neither of us was the type of person who felt the need to reach out and talk for no particular reason (heck, after working in inbound customer service for a few years, I developed an absolute aversion to talking on the phone unless absolutely necessary)… but we both knew we could reach out if either of us needed something. And when we did, we’d end up talking for hours. And hours.

I haven’t really been a part of his world for a few years, especially after his first stroke 4 years ago. There are others who have known him better recently. But I loved him, and I wanted to make sure he knew that.

This past Monday, he went to the emergency room after a second stroke. After I got off work, I went to see him in the hospital, and he told me some things. He told me he’d kind of suspected this was going to happen, and he really didn’t want to go through it again. The first stroke had taken his left side, and his music, and his job away from him. It had taken away what made him *him*, and he hadn’t been happy about it but he could deal with it. He could tolerate it. The second took his right side, and he was rapidly losing his ability to communicate clearly, and he told me he didn’t want to be that guy, trapped inside his own body, being pushed around in a chair with someone else forced to feed him and change him. He saw the end coming as clear as anything. When he left his house that morning, he felt in his bones he wasn’t ever going home again.

He said his only regret was that when he left this world, people would be sad.

So Tuesday evening, I spent a couple of hours with him in the ICU, and I held my phone to his head so Mom could talk to him for the last time. The doctor told her that she wouldn’t even have time to fly back here to be with him, so I was happy to do this for her. I held his hand. I told him I wished that we’d spent more time together lately. He was struggling to speak, but he told me “I wish I could talk.” And then I said “Hey, it’s probably better this way, because if you could we’d be up chatting until 2 AM because neither of us would shut up.” Sarcasm and slightly inappropriate humor… it was our way. I told him I’d be back on Wednesday to hang out, keep him company, and annoy him because that’s what I’m here for.

The doctor had underestimated his stubbornness, apparently, because Don held on for another 3 days. Mom and I talked about whether she should come. I told her it would be so much harder on her if she did – the expense and hassle of trying to secure last minute travel arrangements, camping out here and needing to be chauffeured around in the big city, and then there was the agony of watching him decline. Holding his hand. Giving him water when he asked for it. Calling for the nurse when he looked uncomfortable. Sitting vigil, always praying, always watching. I bore that for her, because it was the one thing I could do.

Every night when I left, I prayed over him, and recited the Aaronic blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” Every night he would tear up and his face would crinkle and I would place my hand on his forehead and say “I’ll be back tomorrow, BB. I love you.”

This morning I was getting dressed to head to the hospital when I got the call that he had passed away a couple of hours earlier.

It seems to me it doesn’t so much matter how we begin, or how many mistakes we make along the way. What we are left with – what others are left with – is how we end.

I am grateful that we ended well.

In Memoriam – Donald Anthony Smith, 31 December 1964 – 11 February 2023