Two weeks before my brother died, he kept trying to reach me. But I was too busy to take his call.
However, when we were kids, I would’ve done anything to get my older brother’s attention. He was my hero. I imitated his tastes in clothes, sports, and music. And I followed him around everywhere he went. He taught me the ways of the world, how to be a man, and when to stand up for myself.
But as we got older, my brother and I drifted apart. This distance wasn’t by design but more a casualty of adult life.
He was married with three kids living in Chicago. And I was an overwhelmed entrepreneur trying to manage projects all over the place. Although my legal residence was in Los Angeles, I spent most of my time in the air, at the rental car counters, or in hotel bars late at night trying to make dinner out of peanuts and pretzels.
When you’re on the road as much as I was, you end up living in a mental travel zone that detaches you from the rest of the world. My bags were always packed and my mind was ready to go “out there.” But I lost touch with the people inside my life.
The Talk
My brother and I didn’t catch up often — maybe once or twice a year — but it was usually an hour-long conversation when we did. As pathetic as it sounds, an hour of my time was hard to come by in those days.
The weekends were usually the best time for me to do personal calls. But on this particular Saturday, I had to attend an all-day workshop for a non-profit board I served on as a senior advisor. It was a prickly event with a heated debate around the direction of the organization.
My brother left me two voice mails during that Saturday meeting, which wasn’t like him. He was hell-bent on speaking with me about something.
I had planned to call him after the retreat, but the intensity of the workshop debates got the best of me, as did most strangers. My tank was empty, and I couldn’t muster the energy to dial his number when I got home. However, when he called me yet again around 7 pm, I saw no way around it.
Our call didn’t last one hour, but almost two hours. It was my whole Saturday night!
We talked about everything — kids, family, mom and dad, life goals, fears, ambitions, politics, and our childhood. I kept waiting for my brother to get around to some big ask or issue he wanted to talk with me about, but all he wanted to do was to catch up.
But when he died two weeks later from an unknown heart condition, my last call with him no longer seemed bizarre to me, but predestined.
The Un-bearable
When I got the call my brother had died, I was traveling in Asia. What struck me about the voice on the other end is that there was no discussion or debate about the matter. I was accustomed to being able to negotiate my way out of any problem, but there was no room for haggling: my brother was dead.
The end!
The finality of his death shut down my mind and the blinds in my home for the next three weeks of shallow, dark, breathing at the edge of a sleepless bed. I couldn’t talk to or face anyone, much less myself.
The pain of my brother’s death wasn’t registering yet. I couldn’t adequately cry or mourn over it. My tear glands were constipated, but a compacted glut of sadness kept welling up inside me. Even though I strained to cry, nothing came out.
The human mind has a way of taking things that are too big to swallow and slicing them up into bite-sized slivers of pain so you can bear the un-bearable. And I was tasting samples of the grief to come in pinches of overpowering sorrow.
The Remnants
The day before the funeral, I went to my brother’s house to wrap some things up. And while there, I could see the remains of my brother’s last day on earth.
There was a razor blade with his fresh beard hairs on the shelf above the bathroom sink. Post-it notes stuck to his computer monitor with reminders of things he needed to work on that day. A wrench in the garage wrapped around a piece of equipment he was tearing apart. A folder on the dining room table with a lawsuit settlement that he had to sign with his old roommate/former partner regarding their failed business venture.
I knew that the latter issue bothered my brother a lot. He spoke of the frustration during our call. But it seemed petty now.
The Questions
When someone you care about dies, weird thoughts can flash through your mind. For instance, I kept pondering the question if my brother’s beard still grew on his face even though he was dead.
I wondered if some deep, hidden part of him knew when he was shaving that morning that this would be his final day. His last whipped mound of shaving cream to feel in his palm. His last sensation of warm water splashing on his face. And his last knick of blood from the hair-clogged razor blade which — unlike my brother — was disposable and beyond it’s intended life span.
I wondered if my brother’s soul know he would die later that night when he went to bed early not feeling well? Did his unconscious mind compel him to hunt me down two weeks before his death? And did something inside him know that our two hour call — about nothing and everything in life — would be our final conversation?
I believe so.
The Call
I don’t think I could’ve lived with myself if I hadn’t taken that call with my brother. But the truth is, I almost didn’t answer his call.
I was the master at putting the essential people in my life off to another day. And I was an expert at keeping my social distance and avoiding emotional connection with those who loved me.
But it wasn’t me that made that call happen; it was brother’s insistence on speaking with me that did it.
I remember feeling something similar when my son’s mother died. She was also determined to talk with me one day about her grand vision for our son’s future and her expectations of me as the father. I couldn’t understand why she had to have that conversation on that day. And even though I tried to avoid the emotional entanglement, my evasiveness didn’t detour her.
Like my brother, she persisted. And because of her determination, I still have the transcript of her last wishes inscribed on my thick skull’s interior walls.
I now take every conversation with my friends and loved ones as potentially my last. Even if I’m too busy or upset with them, I still look at them as if they’re going into surgery. And I always let them know directly or indirectly how important they are to me in my life.
The Words
When news got out that my brother had died, I got lots of cards, letters, voice mails, and books from people trying to help me in my time of pain. But nothing could console me, except a few words from Frank.
Frank was one of the few people in business who brought no ego into the room and was not in competition with anyone. His personality was that of a monastic crusader. And I’ll never forget his simple but profound words of advice to me about the experience of losing his older brother.
Those two sentences gave me more hope, strength, and comfort than anything anyone else said. Why? Because I couldn’t fathom how I’d ever get passed the loss of my brother. But Frank gave me some hope that I might feel alive again and experience joy someday in the future. And that possibility gave me something to hold onto during the period of unbearable pain.
The Beginning
I later realized that my brother’s death was not the end of my life, but the start of it.
I’m alive now. And I consider it a blessing to be here.
When something joyful happens to me, I feel it more now, like a cold glass of water for a sunburnt, thirsty, and cotton-mouthed man trapped on a raft adrift at sea for a week. Or someone that’s never tasted the sweetness of a strawberry before.
Life tastes much better now. And I’m much more grateful—if not in awe—that my lungs, heart, and liver still work on their own, despite my previous disregard for them.
My brother didn’t get to finish his life out or see his kids grow up. But I still have a chance to do so. Instead of chasing a pot of gold at the end of the workaholic rainbow, I now realize the gift of life is that I get to be here. I get to see the magic, beauty, and horrors of this freak show we call life. And I get to attend this parade of vanity — with all our concerns about vibrant looking skin, reality show spats, and selfies.
And I’m savoring every minute of it as if it were my last glimpse of the spectacle.
The deep well of pain my brother’s death caused me, now serves as a container I fill daily with the thrill and joy of being alive. And I feel the sensations of life much more than I did before.
. . .
The Advice
Before my brother’s death, I was clinging to the delusional attachments of eternal life. And I was terrified by the briefness of time my loved ones get to spend here on earth. I did everything I could to avoid thinking about those things — as if being busy would make them go away. But now I embrace those realities head-on and make good use of the limited time I get to be here.
For those who are too busy and running away from life like I was, here’s my advice:
#1: Take the call from your friends and family. Don’t put them off because you might never get to speak to them again.
#2: Never leave the people you love on bad terms or with harsh words stinging their ears. Even if you’re upset with them about something, I promise you it will all be trivial in the end. Whatever issues you might harbor, they won’t matter anywhere near as much as hearing their voice and seeing their animated faces. Always keep in mind that your last words might well be your last words.
#3: Take time to get a good close look at the people you care about in your life. Study their faces, ears, toes, moles, scar, and mannerisms as if it’s your final look. Ask them about the most defining experiences of their life. And ask them about their recollections of your history together, because they’re a crucial witness to your life and carry essential parts of your biography with them.
Last call
This summer was the eighth anniversary of my brother’s death, and I still think about him every day. And I reflect on our last conversation often, as if it were yesterday.
But my story of loss is no harder to bear than the millions of other people that lose loved ones in their lives every day. While it’s sad that we all have to die someday, if we lived forever, we wouldn’t take “life” seriously enough. We’d take it for granted and waste it away, just as we have done with the earth’s precious resources.
As humans, we only value and appreciate what’s limited. And as much as we avoid thinking about it, your life and your friends and loved ones’ lives are limited.
We expend so much of our energy in life pursuing things like fame, youth, beauty, money, power, and success in a desperate attempt to live forever. We stay overbooked as a strategy to avoid life’s realities. But everyone around you that matters in your life is going to die either before or after you, so make sure you let them know how much they mean to you now, not after it’s too late.
And whatever you do, make sure you take their call, as it might your last conversation with them.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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Photo credit: Unsplash