I hardly ever think about my brother Darrell. Some people probably don't even know I have another brother besides Travis. I'm not sad that he's gone; I was never one to grieve. I remember when Darrell passed away I couldn't face people. A couple of days of feeling dumbfounded mixed with utter melancholy and I was back to normal. I honestly can't even remember the exact year he died. It was a handful of years ago. It actually kind of pains me that I can't remember that detail. Some might look at the way I can quickly move on from such difficult situations and think I must not feel as deeply as they would in my shoes. Others would probably be envious of this trait. Either way it doesn't matter since I made my peace with the fact that he passed away and moved back towards normality. I'd rather not grieve for him but instead reflect back on him from time to time and simply remember what made him Darrell.
Darrell and I were never particularly close because of the age difference (9 years) but I always felt kindred with him nonetheless. He wasn't my play buddy there to be Storm Shadow to my Snake Eyes but I remember times when he didn't have school or work and would come pick me up from school and we'd go to lunch. He'd regale me with tales of this cute girl or that cute girl he was wooing and I just thought he was the coolest dude ever. He was a mentor in the way that he'd been through some shit and he would pass on the cliff notes to me so I would have a heads up when I came to the same part in my life.
He and my other brother Travis used to have an apartment together in Paradise Valley and I used to go there often and they would let me drink a beer or two and he'd show me his porn collection and let me borrow stuff here and there. It sounds hilarious and pathetic in hindsight but at the time, being the sheltered innocent teenage boy I was, it was like being shown the treasures of the world. He also was half of my musical influence along with Travis because together they knew all the awesome shit I should be listening to. Unrelated but I remember this time when I was asked to play dumb when his current girlfriend showed up while I was there and he was trying to patch things up with his ex girlfriend. I didn't necessarily agree with the situation but I was going to help my brother and a part of me even felt glad to be a part of his crazy shenanigans. He was also the one to talk to me about sex since my dad and I were never close and our mom probably didn't want me having sex for as long as humanly possible. He drove me to buy my first pack of condoms, which I won't get into that story unto itself, but it was hilarious and mortifying and involved a Circle K clerk who thought I was asking for candy.
Years later as I was older I went to visit him and his wife (the ex he patched things up with) in Santa Barbara where they had moved to get out of Arizona finally. It was the best couple of days of my life hanging out with my brother and taking my guitar down to the beach. I felt free and I felt like the world was sitting there in front of me motioning me to step forward and jump head first into it all. My bro and I talked life and ambitions and possibilities. My bro decided it was time to give me a rundown of all the drugs I was likely to experiment with (I never did). I really started to see a lot of the similarities between us. I also saw the key differences that set us apart. For instance, my brother was a pioneer and maybe it was in his DNA to experiment and indulge in every possible vice he could get into just to see all the corners of social behaviors, and also to piss our mom off. I on the other hand never was one to do things just for the sake of doing them or out of spite.
I had little to do with him for a great deal of time after that point. Eventually though Darrell and his wife had a baby girl and moved back to Arizona. Darrell the pioneer having the first child of any of us and making me an uncle. I saw Darrell growing into a family man who cared for his wife and child and worked to better himself for their sake. I also saw him eventually run back to his vices; out of habit or just because of stress I'll never know.
I'll fast forward a bit.
Eventually Darrell got himself in trouble with alcohol and had a couple of car accidents while under the influence. It broke my heart to see this life he had made start to crumble and what followed was one of the most difficult periods my family has gone through. Darrell and his wife were not on speaking terms because of his alcoholism and he was living out of a Motel 6 going through cases and cases of beer every single day. We would go to visit him and he would always be in a drunken stupor attempting to shrug and laugh away his situation. It was depressing to watch him in this state. I had looked up to him as this mentor and pioneer and here he was this broken person who barely resembled the Darrell I had grown up knowing. There were other things that had happened too, truly scary things that I won't talk about here out of respect for him but I had a hard time reconciling them in my head.
He had good days and bad days; it looked like he was doing better and would recover but then the next day he'd slip back into knocking himself out with booze. It was such a rollercoaster for me but I didn't know what I could do and so I didn't show just how torn up I really was. Eventually he lost his struggle and one day he simply was no more. I didn't understand any of it. One day Darrell was here and the next day I was at his place with paramedics on the seen and my mom outside with her face twisted in pain at this gaping hole that had been torn in our universe.
Maybe that's why I got over it so quickly because I knew she wouldn't and I wanted to be strong for both of us.
I don't grieve for him but every once in awhile I'm reminded of him and feel him at the weirdest times. Usually it's because I see something or hear something and the first thought that pops into my head is "Would Darrell like this?" I wish he was still around because I finally feel like I could introduce him to awesome musicians and movies that my naive teenaged brain didn't know about back then. I wonder what he would've thought of Episode III or the new Star Trek. I wonder if he would've liked Lady Gaga or if he had ever listened to Poe. I wonder what games we would've played together on Xbox Live or if he would've quested with me in WoW. I wonder what drinks we would've had together at the Big Bang or if he would've told me that Still Life With Woodpecker was the best book he'd read in a long long time. It's funny that thinking about these seemingly innocuous things is what chokes me up.
It was an impactful read. I believe its the best one you've done so far.
Posted by: Chad | 06/21/2010 at 11:57 PM