I’m grateful for what remains unchanged
The summer before he died, my big brother Tom stood at the steering wheel of our father’s idling runabout, waiting for our sons and our nephews to climb back into their inner tubes so he could gleefully whip them around on tow ropes behind the boat. He grinned, looking all around at the sunshine gleaming on the blue bay, Mount Rainier (or as we say, The Mountain) rising monumentally on the horizon south of us.
“God, it’s just a beautiful day,” he said, completely happy driving this boat, on this bay, on this day, with the boys flying in and out of the wake on their skittering tubes, their mouths alternately o-shaped, or laughing at each others’ expressions, as I spotted for their hand signals and flipped tubes, all of us craving the speed, the sun, wind and salt spray in our faces. It was a beautiful day because he was doing something he loved with the people he loved in a place he loved in the glittering sun.
“I want to try that,” I said, and he laughed, saying he couldn’t take the bouncing and impact anymore. “No, you don’t!”
That August was Tom’s last and by March he was dead at 55 of a melanoma that had apparently lain dormant since his first tumor was discovered and they thought, completely removed, 33 years before. He was a cyclone of activity, thought and argument, the devoted husband and father of two, the magnetic center of a group of devoted friends. His unthinkable disappearance from our lives shocked us all for years.
So much of our personal worlds and the larger world have changed since then. Our parents have died, the youngest of our kids is 36 and several have children of their own. There are no family boats riding on buoys in the bay. Our boat sank that first summer after Tom died. It almost felt predestined. Tom took that part of our lives with him. There are no raucous teenage boys daring each other to swim to a distant piling, climbing up and jumping off into the deep waters, and swimming back. And of course, America has changed.
For a long time I missed being able to share with him books that I thought he would like. I missed driving to the mountains with him to coach skiing, singing along with the radio. I even missed his bold and sometimes unsuccessful cooking experiments. I felt wistful that Tom had missed the thrill of our first black president, then our first woman nominee of a major party. I wondered what he would have said about the appalling first election of Donald Trump, and then the relief of Joe Biden’s presidency. Now I think my brother and parents were so lucky not to have seen what has happened to us since Jan. 20.
Tom’s last August was 19 years ago. But I have never forgotten his joy and contentment on that day, on what would be my final time of so many on the water with him. I feel his wonder every time I look out there, and I’m so grateful for every beautiful day.
