I am heartbroken over the loss of my eldest brother in February of 2021. It’s not just that we were close, I have lost the last remaining member who lived with our mother. The only child from the four of us who had a constant front seat to our mother’s progression into madness. 

But, getting my brother to share what our mother was like when he was a child was nearly impossible. So much of her life remains sealed by time and the reticence of family to share. There was a ten year age difference between me and my eldest brother i.e. when I was ten years old, he was twenty. It wasn’t until I grew older that I would attempt to pry into the past.

He knew her before my siblings and I were born. He got to see a whole other Ruby who worked, took care of him, and made sure he knew how to read, write, and do math. He saw the fissures that began to reveal that she was coming apart – long before the hospitalizations and before she could no longer care for her children.

My eldest brother who made me laugh and who indulged my childhood pranks made our house more of a home. He made our sad home more bearable for me. Even though he was a teen and then a grown man during my childhood, he would occasionally let me hang out with him and his friends. When he was home, we  would destroy and then clean the kitchen when we cooked.

Little did I know that my brother and his friend would grill for the neighborhood children coming home from school. He and M (his best friend) would club at night, get up the next day, and spend their money on buns and meat. They wanted to extend what they were doing into a program to feed the kids in the neighborhood but didn’t know how. I never knew much about his life when he wasn’t home.

My eldest brother paid a heavy price for the neglect and pain he experienced in his childhood during the 1980s. Even though he turned his life around, the past rested in the heavy corners of his eyes, and in the crevices of his smile You could tell that his life had been rough. Still, he found love and happiness with his wife Dora; their love for one another is the foundation of the family they blended. He has joined the love of his life and is missed by his children and grandchildren. 

Our phone calls always ended with us talking smack to each other and then at the end, we’d always say, “I love you.”