To My Brother Jyre (once John) Who Is Headed to Hospice

I guess I thought you’d live forever.

When I was a freshman at Kenyon, every once in a while an envelope would arrive thick with cartoons. It wasn’t the cartoons themselves that meant all that much to me, it was the number of them and the obvious care you’d taken while cutting them out of the newspaper.

I still marvel at that process: look at the paper; pick a cartoon; cut along the black edges; add it to the pile. Put the stack in an envelope; address the envelope, get a stamp (probably from Mom or Dad), and either put it in the mailbox on the porch (what was our mailman’s name?? Mr…), or walk down the street to the post office.

Thank you for that labor and shared humor.

You drove me nuts a lot of the time. I’m the older sister—I think that was your role: don’t listen when I desperately tried to boss you around. I’m sorry I tried to bite off a piece of your ear that one time. Mostly I’m sorry because it tasted like wax, and I had to walk around with the shame of knowing I bit you with the intention of causing pain. I don’t remember why I was so mad. I’m pretty sure I never bit you again. I don’t remember you ever biting me, so thank you for that.

Remember the picture in the newspaper of you and Sam at the lemonade stand you’d set up in front of our house? You were looking one direction and Sam was looking in the other. You both were so damn cute.

I remember how you could sit at the piano and play songs without reading music. Your body knew music as well if not better than that piano did.

Remember when we went camping and you made friends with a kid named Stretch? Am I making this up? I remember seeing you two walking down a dirt road. You were so happy. You loved your friends.

Remember eating (sugar?!) cereal (Frosted Flakes??!!) in the car during one (every?) of those camping trips when it was pouring rain?

I wish you could live forever only because it’s so sad to think of the world without you occupying the space you made in it for yourself. I feel like you’ve been fighting to both leave and stay ever since the day you came to us at eight weeks old, a bright splinter of agony, so inconsolable Dr. Robb came to the house daily for a while to help make sure you stayed alive.

You made it. You have made friends and art and love and music. You have journeyed, joined groups, eaten ice cream, and on and on and on. You called home that one time, high on something (life?), and practically sang to me, “Anne, will you put Mom and Dad on the phone?! I’m bisexual!!” You gave me the wild pleasure of yelling, “Mom! Dad! John’s on the phone!”

(I think you had not yet changed your name. If you had, I’m sorry for getting it wrong.)

You landed on this planet with a heart and soul that wanted to fight for livf and equality and peace and fairness and Max Creek.

You did good.

May your journey be soft and loving and bright.

With love,

Your sister Anne.