My Brother Jim

My brother Jim died in August as a result of early onset Alzheimer's. 

People were very kind and said that it was a great loss. And it was and is, but for me the loss started about three years ago, which was the last time I had a real conversation with him.  

We grew up together, sharing the same room for 10 years until my sisters got married, and we took over theirs. Jim painted his walls purple. One of the reason was that his high school, Gonzaga, had purple and white as its school colors. Another reason was that he was Jim, sometimes outspoken, seldom shy.

Until the big move to separate rooms, we would watch television together with the lights out and the sound down so Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear, gazing up at a 10-inch screen situated on a three-foot stand. We'd listen to records, including the comedy routines of a stand-up comic who is not highly morally regarded at this time but whose name rhymes with Bosby and who had an album titled "To Russell My Brother Whom I Slept With."

To Jim, my brother, whom I slept with.

We'd also listen to the records of the parodist Allen Sherman. Both Cosby and Sherman formed some of my cultural understanding, and I think Jim's too. We learned about parody from Sherman, who would use the melodies of popular songs and write funny lyrics. 

Sherman did a parody of a song Doris Day sang in the 1953 movie Calamity Jane, “Secret Love” and not only took the melody but wrote lyrics that matched the surprise of the song. The original song by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster begins, “Once I had a secret love,/That lived within the heart of me,” and ends, “Now my heart’s an open door,/My secret love’s no secret any more.” Sherman’s parody was titled “Secret Code,” and begins, “Once I had a secret code,/Where A was B and B was G,” and ends, “That is how we won the war,/My secret code’s no secret any more.” 

We realized that parody actually takes original, possibly copyrighted material and makes fun of it. In law school, I learned how this meets the fair use exception of the copyright law because its purpose is satire and comment. In a similar way, when Jim and I watched Walt Disney's Fantasia, we realized that what made the hippos and alligators in ballet costumes doing Americare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours Fantasia" really funny is that the music was actually Ponchielli's and they danced to it perfectly except for the fact that they were hippos and alligators. 

Cosby would talk about things like how the captains of opposing teams in football games are introduced by the referee and during the coin toss pick heads or tails. And he would imagine that happening in conflicts in history. "Captain Custer, this is Captain Sitting Bull. Captain Sitting Bull, this is Captain Custer."

Our Dad had a workshop and used to take time to show us how to build and fix things. Jim listened. Me, not so much. I may have picked up something about problem solving by osmosis, but it was Jim who learned to fix the plumbing and build a table. He was inquisitive and always eager to learn. 

As a result, Jim was the one family members called when something was broken. And he would always come. He would also come when you didn't call, when he just heard that your sink was stopped or you had a flat tire. And he made things. My wife and I still have the nice bar he built for us as a wedding present.

He was a selfless, caring, generous person. 

His inquisitiveness may have sometimes made him too eager to spread new knowledge. I remember we were having dinner with Mom and Grandma, my mom's mother, a sweet and gentle Italian-born lady. Jim had just read a book on religion that indicated that angels were a Persian myth that the Bible took over. Jim announced this at the dinner table, and Gram dropped her fork and said, 'Oh, Jimmie. You have to believe in angels. You have to."

Jim, are there angels? You would know now.

He also ran and exercised and managed to work his pulse rate into almost every conversation. “Do you remember how many home runs Babe Ruth hit for the record?” “60, Jim.” “Right. And did you know my pulse rate is 60!”

Stubborn? A little bit. The only phrase Jim knew in Italian was “Teste de Calabrese,” which means, “You have a head from Calabria,” which is very stony. He knew it because Dad used it a lot about both of us.

He married young and divorced 10 years later, the father of three children whom he pretty much raised, selflessly, making sure they received catechetical training and that they would be able to go to and complete their college educations. They're grown now, Professionals, and pretty darn good people, making contributions to the world. Their Dad would be proud, and there’s a new grandson whose middle name is James.

He always wanted to be a writer. He had a very inventive mind. I remember a short story he wrote about a little boy bringing an elephant’s tooth to a museum. But I think he was too busy helping other people to spend the time. Instead, he worked in human resources, once again helping others.

About five years ago, for my birthday, my wife gave me three tickets for a Washington Nationals baseball game. She remembered my telling her that our Dad would take us to games when the team was the Washington Senators and the stadium was called Griffith. We'd sit on the first-base side near the home team dugout. The team moved to RFK Stadium, and after Dad died my two brothers and I joined the "Knot-hole Club," with cheap-seats so far up in the bleachers that we're talking nose-bleeds and eagles but also the only way we could afford to go. The players really did look like ants playing pin-ball. But then baseball left D.C., only to return in 2005. 

I value that day beyond measurement. My wife had given me the perfect gift. Washington lost, but we had a bright, sunny, brotherly day. It was during that day that Jim told me the doctor thought something was wrong with his memory. 

He stayed with Mom for a while, and my wife and I would go visit for dinner. I remember once Jim said, "Didn't you write a play in high school that was a parody of Shakespeare's Richard III called 'Richard the Toity-Terd?’" I had, and he remembered it decades later. It's funny how the mind works.

He just accepted his fate, talking about how at a certain point his children should just put him on a bus to Milwaukee. He didn't want to burden them. Selfless, as usual.

I've missed him for years. We'd try to visit him at the facility every two weeks. After a while he didn't seem to recognize us. But it was good to be with him. And there was always the hope that he knew we were there, that he knew who we were and that he understood what we were saying.

And one day I had reason to believe he did know, he did understand. Among the records we used to listen to in our shared room was the original cast album of the 1955 musical Damn Yankees. We liked it because it was about our Washington Senators and also because it has a great score, especially the song “(You gotta have) Heart” that the manager sings to his team.  The manger sings it through once, and then there’s a musical vamp when the players strut around before singing the song themselves: Dum-da-dum da, dat-dat-dat-dat-dat/ Dum-da-dum da, dat-dat-dat-dat-dat.” One day when we were visiting Jim in the assisted living facility, we were talking to him, and he wasn’t responding. So I reminisced about Damn Yankees and sang “Heart” all the way through. And when I had finished, Jim suddenly started singing the vamp: “Dum-da-dum da, dat-dat-dat-dat-dat.” And I said to myself, “He’s still in there. Not only does he know who we are, he knows the vamp from ‘Heart.’”

He’s no longer here for us to visit. But he's in our hearts. He's the song we'll remember when someone else smiles in a certain way or helps another person.

Good person, dependable, loving, kind. That’s the example he set.

We love you, Jim, and always will. We’ll also always remember.

Copyright 2015 by John T. Aquino