eulogy
a story about my brother's funeral
We entered the chapel from the front single file, heads bowed to avoid the stares, and shuffled into the front row. David, my mom, Jesse, Ricky, Kel, then me. And what about Alex? The pews creaked and groaned as everyone sat back down after us.
On a Saturday morning some fifteen years ago, he and I would be waking up early to play Mario Kart. Still in our nightshirts, we’d roll out of bed and plop down in front of the 14 inch tube tv in our room and grab the controllers, one gray and one translucently purple. Even though those were the colors that came with the system, I always felt that which one we each chose said something about us: me trying to blend in with the gray and Alex not afraid to be himself with the purple.
In that vein, the first thing he wanted to be was a veterinarian, despite the fact that our parents were in finance and business, because he loved animals. But why not be a doctor with a private practice? Our mom would ask. Veterinarians didn’t carry the same status as doctors.
The sermon began, but my mind drifted.
The Nintendo mornings didn’t last forever though, and as we grew up, we grew apart, each learning to cope with our family dynamics in our own way. I became focused on myself, my acne, and pleasing our mom with academics, and Alex turned to his dog books and a few close friends. He always claimed that there was a time when he first joined my school, when he was in 5th grade and I was in 8th, that I ignored him in the hallway. I don’t remember that, but it’s what he felt.
After the sermon, my mom was the first of us to say something, which was good because I was quite nervous. She hadn’t really prepared so she improvised; she stood up straight, spoke clearly, and gesticulated with her hands. People told me later that she came off looking cold and unfeeling, but I knew that she was trying to be strong for him.
Still, I couldn’t help but think back to just a few months prior, visiting them in DC where Alex lived at home, and my shock at the state of their relationship. He had been in and out of psych wards and rehabs for the past five years, had lost several teaching jobs that he’d loved, but was doing his best now working at a grocery store. It wasn’t good enough for her. He was behind his peers. Look at what they were doing, they had internships on Wall Street and cushy consulting jobs. And he was falling far behind. There was no pushback when she spoke to him this way either, he accepted her words as unfortunate truths about his shortcomings. And he spent countless hours scrolling LinkedIn and comparing himself to others, so indoctrinated by her insecurities that she didn’t even have to do the berating anymore.
My nerves heightened further as my mom finished her speech. I got up and made a show of hugging her in front of everyone, to display support and solidarity, I think. I don’t know exactly, but it felt staged. I could feel every pair of eyes in the chapel on my back. I walked up to the podium, placed my phone on it, and finally looked up. A couple hundred sets of eyes belonging to parents, friends, teachers, all looking at me. At the friend, the son’s friend, the ex-pupil, whose younger brother had taken his own life.
My head now exploding with a disorienting and surreal energy, my breathing so heavy it reverberated through the microphone and around the chapel, I looked around. Everything went big and then small alternately, giant waves pulsing through my field of vision. My stomach sank and my heart raced. My hands shook violently as I raised them to the podium. But as I grabbed onto it and stepped forward, something shifted.
Gradually at first and then all of a sudden, a feeling of immense and infinite strength overcame me. It came from somewhere deep in my abdomen, somewhere that I could tell was bottomless and unbounded. Somewhere Alex was. It became so overpowering that I knew a hurricane couldn’t have uprooted me from where I stood at that moment; it would have left my podium and me upright, knuckles shining bone-white against the strewn debris of the chapel, bursting forth with the intensity of a supernova.
My voice boomed and shook but it did not falter. It came from a place I had never spoken from before.
P.S. here is what we listened to on the way to the chapel:
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