One year gone

One year ago today, my brother Tyler died. He was forty years old. I was forty-three at the time. I’m forty-four now. He’s still forty.

It was my immense and terrible privilege to be present in the room when he died. Peacefully. Quietly. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life. As profound, in a way, as being present for the birth of my children. Life beginning, and ending. Poetic and mysterious processes. Even more so, in my case. Tyler died in the same hospital where, twelve years earlier, my oldest daughter was born. Separated by a few floors, and the veil between this world and what comes after it.

I don’t wish to go into much more detail, except to note another parallel I just noticed today, one year and forever later.

While my brother was on his deathbed, I read to him from a book. Strange word, that. ‘Deathbed.’ Something Victorian about it, and thus out of place. Lace curtains and death masks. A bed that sits in a home, it seems to suggest. Nothing like the hospital bed where Tyler died. But death is timeless and scrambles chronology however it sees fit.

The book I read to Tyler on his deathbed was a novel called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It’s written by Susanna Clarke. It was one of his favorite books. My wife and I gave him a copy, some birthday or Christmas, much like he gave us books or movies as gifts. The titular characters are magicians living in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. It is a very long book.

And my brother was on his deathbed for a short time, thankfully. I only read a few pages. When I closed the book, once he was gone, I didn’t open it again until today, a year later. I noticed the dedication. “In memory of my brother, Paul Frederick Gunn Clarke, 1961-2000.” Clarke lost her own brother, when he was nearly the exact same age as mine. She dedicated her book to his memory. The same book I read to my brother, in whose memory I will write for as long as I live.

It is tempting to make this more meaningful than it actually is. People read books, and they write them, and they die. Synchronicities are bound to occur. Yet what makes lives meaningful, and books, is that they end. The story is complete. You can do with it what you wish. Make what you want out of it. Form connections that did not exist when it was made.

Tyler’s life ended, and when it ended, it assumed a shape and took on a meaning it didn’t when he was alive. So will mine. So will yours. And this is all meaning is: connecting one thing to another, when no connection existed before. A book, to a room, to a life.

Turn the page. Close the book and pick it up. Put it in the garden, or on the sidewalk. Somewhere it forms a new connection, and makes new meaning.