A funeral is an irreplicable event. In normal families a funeral can be a reunion. In my family, in any family after the passage of up to 50 years, it is more a first meeting than reunion. How could I know my big brother's family after so much time? The children of his children I had never heard of or seen. My nephew, my big brother's S-2, did not know until I told him on this trip that I had two fully grown children of my own. S-1 and D-1 and I have made solemn vows to stay in touch with one another and to meet again in more normal circumstances but what in my family history would suggest that as reasonably likely? There are 1,000 miles between me and the nearest of them. More likely, I will never see them again. I have spoken to the captain every day (only three so far), including twice today, Jan. 17. I think I have spoken to D-1 every day, as well, for 48 minutes on January 16 and 38 minutes today.
I don't give advice to adults unless they ask specifically (and then I read them their Miranda rights to discourage them). I employ the Socratic method and by my questions hope to guide them to the answers they seek. They have the right to live their lives however they choose, and are capable of deciding and I have no right to practice counseling or psychology or law from 1,000 miles away on people I barely know. So far they have not asked for personal advice (in which they are inestimably wise) and I have just listened.
I have written in these pages some of the relativity of reality. The
four days of this trip were a shocking overturn of my reality. Is reality what I heard and observed with my own eyes on this trip? Does that include how loving my big brother was to me? As far as I could tell, and I did everything reasonable to validate, it was all real, the good and the bad, the laughter and the tears (more of the latter, much more), the fun and the exquisitely painful. If this trip was unreal in some sense, because of the unique circumstances is that unreality by degree or kind? I think neither. Certainly the emotions were made more potent for having been distilled. But what I was told and saw was as real as one mortal human is given the capacity to discern. During this "horrible" (D-1's word after), irreplicable event, terrible
confidences, truthful, not to be revealed to others were made to me in a frisson,
under unique circumstances similar to that of a church confessional booth. I would be
betraying confidences if I revealed what one said to me to another. They are not unreal for the circumstances.
What then do I do with all of this now? How do I treat my big brother and his individual five children? Until, and if, I have a better idea it all is going to get put into a Silly Putty egg, which I will close tight and start anew with all.
