"Thomas?"
"Yes?"
"Bryant is dead."
That exchange will live with me til the day I die.
My father called me at work on Monday, July 13, 2009, to tell me that my brother was dead.
Bryant passed away earlier that afternoon. He was 38.
No, it wasn't expected.
Yes, it was a complete and utter shock.
All the more so because my father had just been down to Florida to see him. He, Bryant, and my niece Kalyn spent all of Saturday (July 11) together. They went to Disney's Animal Kingdom and then had dinner with my brother David and his wife Amy. Indeed, my father thought Bryant was looking healthier and more fit than he had in past years, when he'd looked rather gaunt.
And then on Monday the 13th, my father flew back to Jersey. When he walked into the house, my stepmom Marlyn was on the phone with an ER doctor from Cape Coral. As a side note, Bryant's ex, Kalyn's mom, lives in Cape Coral. Bryant had driven down there on Sunday the 12th to drop Kalyn off there.
Marlyn gave the phone to my father.
The ER doctor told my father that Bryant was gone.
Before dawn's crack the next morning, my father hopped back on the plane to go back to Florida.
The funeral was Thursday, July 16. I was there, as were many other relatives from my father's side.
I did not give a eulogy. I wanted to, but my brain hadn't processed my brother's passing sufficiently enough to allow me the emotional leeway.
My father spent all day Wednesday the 15th cooped up in his motel room at the Red Roof Inn in North Fort Myers writing and rewriting a eulogy with my aunt, his kid sister, providing moral support.
I got there that night.
Dad told me he was in no shape to read the eulogy at the funeral. Could I do it? I said sure before I even read it.
As it turns out, I was able to read it all the way through in front of the seventy or so attendees without breaking down.
Since then, I've thought about what I'd've written had I more time. This is what I've come up with.
Let me preface my thoughts about Bryant by saying that, in general, I'm not a big fan of eulogies. As an avid reader and aspiring novelist, I'm much more partial to full, three-dimensional portraits of people, whether they be fictional characters in a story or the real flesh-and-blood type. Therein lies the great glaring weakness with eulogies. By definition, they're two-dimensional, and therefore incomplete. A eulogy could never hope to do justice to a creature as complex as a human being.
Accordingly, this isn't a eulogy so much as a remembrance. A character study, if you will.
One of the common denominators underlying people's recollections about Bryant was that he was one tough bastard. Hell, my mom dubbed him Double before he was ten, because he always got into "double trouble," so what does that tell you? This moniker stuck with him literally to his dying day. You can certainly add me to that chorus. During the mid eighties at 48 Broad in Mount Holly, New Jersey, I was in elementary school and Bryant was just starting high school. I won't make any bones about it. Bryant beat me up. A lot. Not with fists to the face or anything that would leave permanent damage. It was more like wrestling. My brothers and I were huge fans of the WWF (now called the WWE) at the time, so he'd be Andre the Giant to my....let's see....Missing Link? Anyway, and it would usually be in the first floor hallway, at night while my dad and stepmom were right there in the living room watching Nature and being scholarly. Indeed, I got so desperate for it to stop that I gave my allowance to my brother Matt, 48 Broad's other resident tough nut, so he'd protect me. I fought fire with fire.
I was short for my age, but I made up for it with width. I was one chunky little kid. People called me Captain Chunk after that character in Goonies. Plus, I had a bed-wetting problem, which didn't help my self-image much. Bryant, in stark contrast, was handsome and strapping, tall for his age. While that would've been enough to make him a lady's man, he was also one of those proverbial bad boys, which only strengthened the babe magnetism. Think James Dean, only with a blond mullet and freckles and a jonesing for music by Megadeth and Motley Crue. I remember the Motley Crue bumper sticker on his bedroom wall. It was black with a silver pentagram.
Now let's go back in time to put Bryant in better context.
He was born in Washington, D.C. on May 31, 1971. By the time he turned two, his parents were divorced, his mom had gone to Florida (a million miles away from D.C. when you're that young), his father had married another woman and had adopted that woman's three kids from her first marriage, and then his father produced yet another child (me) with that woman. This was by no means consistent with the worlds other people lived in. Bryant's nuclear home broke before he could really enjoy it. The odds were sort of stacked against him before he had a say in anything. By the time Bryant could walk and talk, his world had become confusing, and therefore frustrating, and it no doubt engendered some hard feelings. Perhaps those hard feelings translated themselves into his mischief. I'm not trying to defend his behavior (yeah right!), I'm just trying to show you what his world was like by the time he was aware of it. As the product of his father's second marriage, perhaps I represented to him the reason his own family didn't work out, and maybe that's why he vented a lot his aggression in my direction.
Let me give you perhaps my favorite example of his aggression. One weekend afternoon, I came up to the third floor to find him trying to fly. Yes, you read that right. He would take these running starts from the hallway into his bedroom and jump with his hands out and land on the ground, like someone sliding headfirst into second. I was like, "Uh, what's going on, Bry?" And he was like, "If you cut your palm, you'll have the power to fly." Now mind you I was seven or so, okay? And I was a big fan of the Superman movies. So yes, for about two minutes, I believed him. And I came pretty close to using the steak knife he had to slash a wound in my palm, no doubt his ulterior motive. But don't worry, common sense intervened. I ended up continuing on my way to my room so I could eat peanut butter cups or whatever (did I mention I was fat?). But I remember having a tiny doubt in the back of my mind: "If I'd gone through with it, could I have achieved flight?"
If you can believe it, though, the first thing I think of when you say Bryant's name is not his being mean, but his laugh. Bryant had hands down one of the best laughs ever. I'll hear it in my head till the day I join him. Sense of humor is a trait I value above all others. As Bryant knew practically from birth, this world can get awfully confusing. Without a sense of humor, what's the point? He had one of the best.
My last night with him in 48 Broad was a Monday night in the fall of 1992. I had just started my junior year of high school. Bryant was two years out of high school and had a warrant out for his arrest by the New Jersey State Troopers because he crashed his car into a parked Domino's Pizza delivery truck. A Monday Night Football game was on. The Atlanta Falcons were hosting their opponent in their brand new Georgia Dome. Bryant said there was no way the Falcons would let anyone beat them in their new house. He left for Florida just as the game got started. The Falcons ended up getting crushed by their opponent, but at least my last night with him in Jersey didn't involve me getting crushed by him. Far from it, we hugged and parted in good terms. How about that? Becoming adults!
Thereafter I only saw him sporadically. He came up for a visit in the spring of 1994, by which time we were living in nearby Hainesport in a brand new house and I was about to graduate from high school. I think the main point of his visit was to collect some stuff he'd left behind. One thing he couldn't find was his ten-speed. When he couldn't find it, he approached me in the kitchen in a very confrontational manner because he thought I had something to do with its disappearance. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Bryant could still be the same old Bryant.
Not so fast! The next time I saw him, at David and Amy's wedding in October 1996, he had a daughter! Holy shit! Did I mention people could be complicated? Of all the 48 Broad kids, Bryant was the LAST person you'd expect would become a soft-hearted, doting father. And he was doting. I could tell right away that for him, the sun rose and set with Kalyn. She was his everything.
But wait, Double got even more interesting over the years. The next time I saw him was at Grandfather Lady's funeral in January 2001. He and I shared a room at the Kenwood Country Club. Much to my surprise (and delight), Bryant had become an astronomy buff. You believe that? Astronomy! This guy! I've always been sort of a sci-fi/outer space geek. Viewing NASA's Astronomy Pic of the Day has been one of my daily rituals for years. But he knew more than me. He'd tell me about which stars belonged to which constellation. Which constellations you could only see in the Southern Hemisphere, you name it. Since then, as I've continued reading the explanations with each Astronomy Pic of the Day, I've discovered I already knew some of what they've said because of Bryant. Plus, he knew a thing or two about horticulture. As he and I were walking down the Kenwood corridors from our room to the lobby, he spotted this one plant in the corner and immediately told me its species name and all that. I also remember him talking in his sleep a lot. In fact, one night he didn't talk so much as yell so loud that he woke me up. I jerked my head up with a start only to see that he was still sleeping. His words were too incoherent to make sense of. I still sometimes wonder what he could've been dreaming about.
I only saw Bryant two more times after this.
For Thanksgiving 2003, we all converged on our nation's capital and stayed at the University Club. Byrant was thirty-two, the age I am now. He brought Kalyn, who was eight. This was the first time I'd seen her since David and Amy's wedding, when she was still just a toddler. We got along great. The night before Thanksgiving, we gathered up on the second floor of the University Club sitting around one of those big round tables. I sat next to Bryant and we just picked up where we'd left off at Grandfather Lady's funeral almost three years earlier. We got along great. Had some beers. Shot the shit. His trademark laugh was still intact. I established a decent rapport with Kalyn. On Friday night, the night before we all scattered back to our day to days, we gathered at Gordon Biersch in downtown D.C. Kalyn and I were at the same part of the long rectangular table. Among other things, we talked about what she had for dinner back home. She said, well, normally on Friday nights they'd have macaroni and cheese. "Kraft?" I asked, 'cause that's what I grew up on. Then Bryant chimed in. "No," he said. "Stouffer's. Because you can just peel off the plastic cover and microwave it." I could dig that. My dad included Stouffer's scallopped apples with the occasional meal when I was growing up in Jersey.
The very last time I saw Bryant was Saturday, December 24, 2005. He, my father, my brother Doug, and I went to see the Redskins host the Giants at FedEx Field. The Redskins actually won, which makes the day memorable right there since the Redskins don't generally win games. Per the family tradition, we got to FedEx hours early and did some tailgating and whatnot. Tailgating's always been my favorite part of the football tradition. Anyway, I asked Bryant about his mother, who was dying of cancer at that point. He expressed frustration at the hospital for their treatment plan. I don't remember the specifics, but he wasn't happy. I also remember thinking to myself that Bryant didn't look all that hot. Indeed, he was kind of gaunt. But that laugh was still there. After a few bottles of truth serum--I mean, beer--I told Bryant it was great to see him. I literally said it just like that, while we ambled to the stadium and up those endless and crowded escalators. "It's really great to see you, Bry." And he turned and laughed his trademark laugh. I'm still not sure what he meant by laughing. Was he not glad to see me? Or was that his way of reciprocating the sentiment? Bryant was the last person you'd find being maudlin, drunk or sober. In fact, wherever he is, he's probably laughing this very instant at how I'm sort of getting maudlin right now.
Yes, Bryant was tough. He could be difficult. But as I hope I've illustrated, he was also far, far more than that. Like any human being, he was complicated. And lest you forget, he was also two things that are more important above all others:
Bryant was Kalyn's father.
And he was my father's son.
"Yes?"
"Bryant is dead."
That exchange will live with me til the day I die.
My father called me at work on Monday, July 13, 2009, to tell me that my brother was dead.
Bryant passed away earlier that afternoon. He was 38.
No, it wasn't expected.
Yes, it was a complete and utter shock.
All the more so because my father had just been down to Florida to see him. He, Bryant, and my niece Kalyn spent all of Saturday (July 11) together. They went to Disney's Animal Kingdom and then had dinner with my brother David and his wife Amy. Indeed, my father thought Bryant was looking healthier and more fit than he had in past years, when he'd looked rather gaunt.
And then on Monday the 13th, my father flew back to Jersey. When he walked into the house, my stepmom Marlyn was on the phone with an ER doctor from Cape Coral. As a side note, Bryant's ex, Kalyn's mom, lives in Cape Coral. Bryant had driven down there on Sunday the 12th to drop Kalyn off there.
Marlyn gave the phone to my father.
The ER doctor told my father that Bryant was gone.
Before dawn's crack the next morning, my father hopped back on the plane to go back to Florida.
The funeral was Thursday, July 16. I was there, as were many other relatives from my father's side.
I did not give a eulogy. I wanted to, but my brain hadn't processed my brother's passing sufficiently enough to allow me the emotional leeway.
My father spent all day Wednesday the 15th cooped up in his motel room at the Red Roof Inn in North Fort Myers writing and rewriting a eulogy with my aunt, his kid sister, providing moral support.
I got there that night.
Dad told me he was in no shape to read the eulogy at the funeral. Could I do it? I said sure before I even read it.
As it turns out, I was able to read it all the way through in front of the seventy or so attendees without breaking down.
Since then, I've thought about what I'd've written had I more time. This is what I've come up with.
Let me preface my thoughts about Bryant by saying that, in general, I'm not a big fan of eulogies. As an avid reader and aspiring novelist, I'm much more partial to full, three-dimensional portraits of people, whether they be fictional characters in a story or the real flesh-and-blood type. Therein lies the great glaring weakness with eulogies. By definition, they're two-dimensional, and therefore incomplete. A eulogy could never hope to do justice to a creature as complex as a human being.
Accordingly, this isn't a eulogy so much as a remembrance. A character study, if you will.
One of the common denominators underlying people's recollections about Bryant was that he was one tough bastard. Hell, my mom dubbed him Double before he was ten, because he always got into "double trouble," so what does that tell you? This moniker stuck with him literally to his dying day. You can certainly add me to that chorus. During the mid eighties at 48 Broad in Mount Holly, New Jersey, I was in elementary school and Bryant was just starting high school. I won't make any bones about it. Bryant beat me up. A lot. Not with fists to the face or anything that would leave permanent damage. It was more like wrestling. My brothers and I were huge fans of the WWF (now called the WWE) at the time, so he'd be Andre the Giant to my....let's see....Missing Link? Anyway, and it would usually be in the first floor hallway, at night while my dad and stepmom were right there in the living room watching Nature and being scholarly. Indeed, I got so desperate for it to stop that I gave my allowance to my brother Matt, 48 Broad's other resident tough nut, so he'd protect me. I fought fire with fire.
I was short for my age, but I made up for it with width. I was one chunky little kid. People called me Captain Chunk after that character in Goonies. Plus, I had a bed-wetting problem, which didn't help my self-image much. Bryant, in stark contrast, was handsome and strapping, tall for his age. While that would've been enough to make him a lady's man, he was also one of those proverbial bad boys, which only strengthened the babe magnetism. Think James Dean, only with a blond mullet and freckles and a jonesing for music by Megadeth and Motley Crue. I remember the Motley Crue bumper sticker on his bedroom wall. It was black with a silver pentagram.
Now let's go back in time to put Bryant in better context.
He was born in Washington, D.C. on May 31, 1971. By the time he turned two, his parents were divorced, his mom had gone to Florida (a million miles away from D.C. when you're that young), his father had married another woman and had adopted that woman's three kids from her first marriage, and then his father produced yet another child (me) with that woman. This was by no means consistent with the worlds other people lived in. Bryant's nuclear home broke before he could really enjoy it. The odds were sort of stacked against him before he had a say in anything. By the time Bryant could walk and talk, his world had become confusing, and therefore frustrating, and it no doubt engendered some hard feelings. Perhaps those hard feelings translated themselves into his mischief. I'm not trying to defend his behavior (yeah right!), I'm just trying to show you what his world was like by the time he was aware of it. As the product of his father's second marriage, perhaps I represented to him the reason his own family didn't work out, and maybe that's why he vented a lot his aggression in my direction.
Let me give you perhaps my favorite example of his aggression. One weekend afternoon, I came up to the third floor to find him trying to fly. Yes, you read that right. He would take these running starts from the hallway into his bedroom and jump with his hands out and land on the ground, like someone sliding headfirst into second. I was like, "Uh, what's going on, Bry?" And he was like, "If you cut your palm, you'll have the power to fly." Now mind you I was seven or so, okay? And I was a big fan of the Superman movies. So yes, for about two minutes, I believed him. And I came pretty close to using the steak knife he had to slash a wound in my palm, no doubt his ulterior motive. But don't worry, common sense intervened. I ended up continuing on my way to my room so I could eat peanut butter cups or whatever (did I mention I was fat?). But I remember having a tiny doubt in the back of my mind: "If I'd gone through with it, could I have achieved flight?"
If you can believe it, though, the first thing I think of when you say Bryant's name is not his being mean, but his laugh. Bryant had hands down one of the best laughs ever. I'll hear it in my head till the day I join him. Sense of humor is a trait I value above all others. As Bryant knew practically from birth, this world can get awfully confusing. Without a sense of humor, what's the point? He had one of the best.
My last night with him in 48 Broad was a Monday night in the fall of 1992. I had just started my junior year of high school. Bryant was two years out of high school and had a warrant out for his arrest by the New Jersey State Troopers because he crashed his car into a parked Domino's Pizza delivery truck. A Monday Night Football game was on. The Atlanta Falcons were hosting their opponent in their brand new Georgia Dome. Bryant said there was no way the Falcons would let anyone beat them in their new house. He left for Florida just as the game got started. The Falcons ended up getting crushed by their opponent, but at least my last night with him in Jersey didn't involve me getting crushed by him. Far from it, we hugged and parted in good terms. How about that? Becoming adults!
Thereafter I only saw him sporadically. He came up for a visit in the spring of 1994, by which time we were living in nearby Hainesport in a brand new house and I was about to graduate from high school. I think the main point of his visit was to collect some stuff he'd left behind. One thing he couldn't find was his ten-speed. When he couldn't find it, he approached me in the kitchen in a very confrontational manner because he thought I had something to do with its disappearance. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Bryant could still be the same old Bryant.
Not so fast! The next time I saw him, at David and Amy's wedding in October 1996, he had a daughter! Holy shit! Did I mention people could be complicated? Of all the 48 Broad kids, Bryant was the LAST person you'd expect would become a soft-hearted, doting father. And he was doting. I could tell right away that for him, the sun rose and set with Kalyn. She was his everything.
But wait, Double got even more interesting over the years. The next time I saw him was at Grandfather Lady's funeral in January 2001. He and I shared a room at the Kenwood Country Club. Much to my surprise (and delight), Bryant had become an astronomy buff. You believe that? Astronomy! This guy! I've always been sort of a sci-fi/outer space geek. Viewing NASA's Astronomy Pic of the Day has been one of my daily rituals for years. But he knew more than me. He'd tell me about which stars belonged to which constellation. Which constellations you could only see in the Southern Hemisphere, you name it. Since then, as I've continued reading the explanations with each Astronomy Pic of the Day, I've discovered I already knew some of what they've said because of Bryant. Plus, he knew a thing or two about horticulture. As he and I were walking down the Kenwood corridors from our room to the lobby, he spotted this one plant in the corner and immediately told me its species name and all that. I also remember him talking in his sleep a lot. In fact, one night he didn't talk so much as yell so loud that he woke me up. I jerked my head up with a start only to see that he was still sleeping. His words were too incoherent to make sense of. I still sometimes wonder what he could've been dreaming about.
I only saw Bryant two more times after this.
For Thanksgiving 2003, we all converged on our nation's capital and stayed at the University Club. Byrant was thirty-two, the age I am now. He brought Kalyn, who was eight. This was the first time I'd seen her since David and Amy's wedding, when she was still just a toddler. We got along great. The night before Thanksgiving, we gathered up on the second floor of the University Club sitting around one of those big round tables. I sat next to Bryant and we just picked up where we'd left off at Grandfather Lady's funeral almost three years earlier. We got along great. Had some beers. Shot the shit. His trademark laugh was still intact. I established a decent rapport with Kalyn. On Friday night, the night before we all scattered back to our day to days, we gathered at Gordon Biersch in downtown D.C. Kalyn and I were at the same part of the long rectangular table. Among other things, we talked about what she had for dinner back home. She said, well, normally on Friday nights they'd have macaroni and cheese. "Kraft?" I asked, 'cause that's what I grew up on. Then Bryant chimed in. "No," he said. "Stouffer's. Because you can just peel off the plastic cover and microwave it." I could dig that. My dad included Stouffer's scallopped apples with the occasional meal when I was growing up in Jersey.
The very last time I saw Bryant was Saturday, December 24, 2005. He, my father, my brother Doug, and I went to see the Redskins host the Giants at FedEx Field. The Redskins actually won, which makes the day memorable right there since the Redskins don't generally win games. Per the family tradition, we got to FedEx hours early and did some tailgating and whatnot. Tailgating's always been my favorite part of the football tradition. Anyway, I asked Bryant about his mother, who was dying of cancer at that point. He expressed frustration at the hospital for their treatment plan. I don't remember the specifics, but he wasn't happy. I also remember thinking to myself that Bryant didn't look all that hot. Indeed, he was kind of gaunt. But that laugh was still there. After a few bottles of truth serum--I mean, beer--I told Bryant it was great to see him. I literally said it just like that, while we ambled to the stadium and up those endless and crowded escalators. "It's really great to see you, Bry." And he turned and laughed his trademark laugh. I'm still not sure what he meant by laughing. Was he not glad to see me? Or was that his way of reciprocating the sentiment? Bryant was the last person you'd find being maudlin, drunk or sober. In fact, wherever he is, he's probably laughing this very instant at how I'm sort of getting maudlin right now.
Yes, Bryant was tough. He could be difficult. But as I hope I've illustrated, he was also far, far more than that. Like any human being, he was complicated. And lest you forget, he was also two things that are more important above all others:
Bryant was Kalyn's father.
And he was my father's son.
Bryant and the daughter he left behind, my niece Kalyn, 14. This was taken in July 2008.
