My brother Scott died last night. He was 70. There were six of us kids. He was the oldest. I’m the baby. He was just a few months shy of being exactly 20 years my senior.
He did not have an easy childhood. As the firstborn our bipolar mom, he was subject to a lot of discipline that would today be labeled as abuse. And he was gay, which could not have been easy for someone growing up in the '40s and '50s.
Because Scott was so much older, he was grown up and out of the house before I really knew him. I remember him visiting when I was in 4th grade and being totally enamored with my newly-discovered big brother, who was very witty and a talented pianist. But that visit ended in bitterness, because he stole a check out of my parents’ checkbook, and when Dad found out, he told Scott would never again find a welcome there.
Fast forward 24 or so years. Scott made contact with my parents, reconciled, and was planning a Thanksgiving homecoming. But Dad, who had been seriously ill for some time, passed away in October, so Scott’s homecoming came a month sooner and under very sad circumstances.
Scott had just retired on disability, so when he came home, he ended up staying on with Mom. We were all very hopeful that he might be a source of help and comfort to her, but the old conflicts sprang back up. Scott ended up moving in with our sister Ann (second oldest), who lived in Florida.
They both had their health (and psychological) issues but were very good for one another. Then, five years ago, Ann died suddenly. Scott was despondent and not coping well, so my next older sister, Jane, convinced him to move “home” to WV, where she and our other brother, Tom, still lived.
Jane took Scott completely under her wing and was a fierce advocate for him when his health began to fail. After he suffered a serious fall in December, we all realized Scott needed to be in a nursing home. Since then, it’s been an endless series of trips to the emergency room for respiratory problems. After the last one, his pulmonologist said Scott’s prognosis was very poor.
Two weeks ago, Jane felt is was serious enough to call me and our other sister, Mary, who lives out West, to tell us that, if we wanted to say goodbye to Scott, we’d better come do it.
It was a weird weekend. We went to visit Scott on Thursday evening after Mary arrived. He seemed pretty chipper and looked good. Mary wanted some one-on-one time with him on Friday, to reconcile some things in her tension-fraught relationship with him. She reported him to be disturbingly loopy at times but otherwise felt that she’d conveyed, and he’d received, the message, “You’re my brother, and I love you.” The three of us went back later that day, and he was REALLY loopy – hallucinating, rambling, confused. It upset all three of us to see him that way.
I stopped by to see him on my way out of town on Monday – and he was as lucid and with-it as he had been on Thursday. He talked about getting back on his feet so we could all to go out to IHOP.
I left town with the distinct impression his passing was going to be like Mom’s: fine one minute then gone the next.
When the phone rang Friday night at 11:15, I knew instantly what it was.
So, goodbye, dear Scott. You’re my brother, and I love you.
It is so strange to think that there are now only four of us.