Sundays

 I could  be angry at my brother  for stuffing his life into tallboy cans of beer and drinking them down, one year after another.  

In the year since he died, I  have tried to write about my brother Ray without making him sound like a Saint or like the stereotypical alcoholic.  I wrote his obituary and highlighted all of the best parts of him like one always does in an obituary.    I cannot deny the pain he caused his friends and family because he loved beer more than anything else.  But it would serve no purpose for me to write about that.  My brother above everything else, was a good person.

Ray and I  went to church when I visited my little hometown, once or twice a year.  It was the only time he went to church and I always looked forward to that time with him.   During my last visit before he died,  he didn’t  meet me at the usual time.   He wasn’t always reliable but this was the first time he didn’t show up at my sister’s house to walk the few blocks to the church.  I knew he wasn’t really feeling well but he wouldn’t admit it.  His skin had a yellow tinge to it that even my rusty retired nursing assessment skills noticed.  

That last Sunday I sat in church  without him as Karen played the opening hymn on the piano.   During the opening prayer,  I heard the heavy wooden church door open.  I looked  back from the last pew where we always sat.     It’s a small congregation and all 10 people in the church that Sunday turned around to look too -  9  actually because DeeDee had left to get bread for communion.  

Ray,  with his red face, freshly showered hair and little boy smile, looked at me,  slightly embarrassed because he was late.  He had overslept, he later told me.   He had on old jeans and a harley t-shirt, but no one really cared.   Most of the congregation was casually dressed too and they all knew my brother. They knew  him and loved him and didn’t judge him.   He smiled again at me, his  smile made toothless by years of ignoring dentists and the effects of drinking on his gum health.  His face was perpetually red but his blue eyes, the eyes of my father, looked clear that day.  He silently moved to a back pew  on the opposite side from where I was sitting because he didn’t want to draw any more attention than he already had. 

I looked over at him sitting alone. It made me sad.   I moved across the aisle to sit with him.  Dee Dee’s husband Bob moved his legs sideways so I could pass.    It didn’t seem right not to be next to him in this little church where we were both baptized and went to Sunday school.  

“You didn’t have to do that” he whispered, but I could tell he was happy I did.  I smelled the beer he had for breakfast on his breath, but I also smelled the crisp fall air on his clothes and the sawdust on his old boots.  

DeeDee came back with the communion bread which turned out to be a package of hot dog buns.    I didn’t think God would mind.  I chuckled thinking that one hot dog bun would have been enough Body of Christ for the entire congregation. 

Church ended as it always did  with the congregation singing “God be with you till we meet again”.  My brother and I did our traditional swaying  in a little dance move to the melody of Karen’s piano accompaniment.

During the year since he  died I think of our moments in the little methodist church on those once or twice yearly Sundays. I am grateful I got up and went to sit with him that last time.  

I could be angry but I am not.  My brother gave me those Sundays and that is what I will remember.