Once upon a time I had a brother. His name was John but everyone called him Kevin. Nobody knew why. It just was.
In his opening chapters he was tall and thin and brilliant and tumultuous. One time he and our father had a fistfight in the dining room after Kevin smashed all the plates our mother had laid for dinner. Our sister herded the little kids into a back room and made us kneel and pray. We could hear crashing while we prayed. Sometimes I still hear crashing when I pray.
In our family when you went off to college you never really came back. We loved each other but sometimes we didn't like each other much. This just was. Kevin went to college. I went to the same college years later because he was my hero even though he didn't talk to me more than about ten words a year and they were generally stern words at that.
But then he and his tough smiling graceful salty wife had children and some of Kevin's walls fell down. One time we got drunk watching a basketball game with a bottle between our chairs neither of us saying a word but that was a delicious and memorable evening for all the things that were said without being said.
Then my tough smiling graceful salty wife and I had children and more of Kevin's walls fell down.
Then in his 50s he found the job he loved more than any other in his whole life and he threw himself into his work with glee and joy and reverence and then he got sick and sicker and sickest and it looks like he will die before Christmas.
This just is.
In his closing chapters he was again tall and thin and brilliant but no longer tumultuous. A lot of his stern wall was a mask, it turned out. A lot of him was shy, it turned out. When he got sick something opened and he became illuminated.
He got scrawny and all his hair fell out except for a tiny scraggle on his chin so that he looked like the world's tallest thinnest goat. He never did get fulsome or sentimental or gregarious but when he smiled he meant it with all