Week Seven - Point of View

Week Seven – Journal #2

Point of View

My younger brother and I were never really close once we left home, but I still remember the days when we used to play together with reckless abandon as kids. Those days were long gone, and we were both different people. I had gone off to try my hand at college and my brother had taken a different path: one of guns and drugs. I never really knew if he was completely ok with me being gay because though he never mocked me, he never seemed proud of me either. But, I was never going to find out because my mother called me one day to tell me my brother had been killed. At 22, he'd been gunned down outside of a nightclub by some thug trying to steal his souped up Impala. I remember being stunned as I hung up the phone. I didn't cry, though. For some reason, I just didn't. By the time the “wake” came, I still hadn't. I watched my mother, go up to my brother's casket and touch his face softly, trying to be strong. My grandmother and aunt were crying pitifully in the front room of the overcrowded and hot funeral parlor and I just took deep breaths. It felt surreal as I listened to the young organist playing a somber spiritual and suddenly it was my turn to view his body. I slowly walked up to him and the minute I saw the waxen face that he would wear to his grave, I immediately was rushed with memories of running around the house with him and playing in the backyard with him and tickling him until he was crying and suddenly, I was sobbing like I never had before. Deep, ugly sounds poured out of me. I would never see him again. As he lay there in the suit that I had worn to my high school prom, I rained down tears on his body until my mother walked up and hugged me from behind, telling me everything was alright and he was now in a better place.


Darald hadn't been very surprised to get the phone call from his mother telling him that his brother, Patrone had been shot. He was, however, stunned to hear that his brother was dead. Patrone, who was only two years younger than he, had chosen to stay in the ghetto that they had both grown up in. He had considered himself a gangster, and he had guns and drugs to prove it. He wasn't afraid of anything or anyone. Darald, on the other hand had chosen to be the first person in his family to go to college, and he was proud of that. Patrone despised the fact that his brother was gay, joking about him to his friends, but for the sake of his mother, he tolerated him. The two brothers couldn't be more different. Darald didn't really make much of his reaction, or lack thereof, to the news that his brother had been slain. Though they had played happily together as kids, they had fought viciously, too. He figured that it had to happen sooner or later, and although he felt a sense of loss, no tears did he shed. While he sat in the first row at his brother's wake, he looked around solemnly at his brother's friends and their many relatives. Barbara, the boys' mother, stood silently weeping. Her arms were hugged tightly to herself as she looked down at the emaciated body in the casket. She had known this day would come. She had warned Patrone when he had been shot two years earlier that if he didn't change his life, it was going to come to an end. And here it was. The organist, who had just gotten her hair fixed especially for the occasion, couldn't help but notice how hot and sticky it was. She wanted to take out her fan just as everyone else had, but she had her hands full with playing. As Barbara made her way back to her seat, Darald slowly stood up and walked toward the casket. He looked down into his brother's face. Suddenly, he remembered the time he tickled Patrone until he had called their mother crying. He remembered the time that he and Patrone had flown their first kite and the time they had gotten their first pair of skates. Memory after memory rushed into his head and he began to weep uncontrollably. He clutched the side of the casket and leaned over it wanting to get inside with him; wanting to have one more chance to be that kid again, to make his brother laugh. He cried like that until Barbra, with fresh tears flowing down her face, came up and lovingly placed her arms around him from behind. She turned him to her and they embraced, sobbing in each other's arms.