The Death of a Collector

Death is not the end - it's just the beginning.  It's the beginning of a long journey that exposes the best sides and the worst sides of the people left behind.

It's a journey nobody prepares you for, made at a time where you're already mentally and physically exhausted from seeing your loved ones off on their journey into the unknown and yearning for rest and peace of mind for yourself and the others who have shared your burden.

The favored words of comfort to the mother of the fallen soldier is "He died quickly and without pain".  Death from cancer is neither of those things.

On the day she died, I learned that my brother was flying in to join us at her side.  I was so relieved to hear this, by then both I and my wife were at the end of our ropes after taking turns staying with her almost every day in 12-hour shifts for the previous 10 days, driving 100 kilometers to the village she'd lived in for the last 20 years.

The one day we weren't there at the hospital was when our older son had to undergo sudden emergency surgery to address an acute appendix that started to inflame in the middle of all of this.

When we arrived, we had a sit-down briefing with him and the nurse in charge of her care to prepare for the next few days.  The nurse urged us that someone should be by her side the whole time and I made it very clear to both of them we simply wouldn't be able to as we were running on fumes already and in addition we had a child recovering from surgery at home and another one that still needed family love and attention.

My brother didn't say much during this conversation, perhaps he was too much in shock himself to say or do anything, perhaps he had never even considered he might be called on to take part in this but when I finally asked directly if he could stay with her during that night then he agreed with a silent nod and a few words.

He would then crash at her place the next day after I relieved him in the morning.  His flight back home was scheduled to be 3 days later.

She breathed her last breath late that afternoon, my brother called me as we were putting our boys to sleep to inform me and after I talked to him I realized how relieved I felt that she had found peace at last and was free from the pain. My brother said that it felt like she had been waiting for him to arrive and to feel us both in the same room before she could let go.  In my heart I think he was right.

I insisted he should come and stay with us that night, it didn't feel right to let him be alone with his thoughts and grief.  A part of me also needed my brother to be able to share my grief for our mother with him but he was adamant he would stay for the night in her apartment and talk to me the next morning when I arrived.

The next morning he called me and wanted to have a memorial service in the hospital crypt the next evening.  It sounded like he wanted to say goodbye to her before he returned back home, so I agreed and started making the arrangements, calling the priest she had requested, calling her closest friends and relatives to tell them about the service.

I then tried calling him as I was about to arrive, but there was no response.  I tried ringing the doorbell to my mother's apartment, there was no reply.  I'd given him the only keys to her apartment that I had the previous morning so I was stuck outside the common entrance to the apartment block until I managed to sneak in when someone else was going out.

The door to her apartment was unlocked, fortunately, so I walked in.  My brother seemed to be asleep fully dressed on her lazy-boy couch and I assumed it was because he had been too tired the night before to bother with details like a bed or even the bigger 3-seater leather couch right next to the lazy-boy.

My mother was a collector, she collected everything she could find at any of the second-hand stores she frequented.  In her eyes, she collected hidden treasures and saved them from oblivion.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, but she was skilled enough with her hands to be able to create collections from the compulsion and charismatic enough to sweep people along with her to create wonderful displays of salvage that made them come alive.

She had several different doll collections, a polar bear collection, a Star Wars collection, a porcelain collection, several card collections, multiple book collections, magazine collections, CD collections, DVD collections, VHS collections,  tape collections, napkin collections, hairpin collections, a clock collection, a rock collection, a lava collections, reading glasses in the hundreds.....

In addition to the collections there were proto-collections that were still forming, much like the early days of the solar system when random debris floated around space and would eventually form into the known planets of today.

The only collection she didn't have was a collection of her collections.  She didn't have a collection of family photos either.

I had seen this build momentum for the last 25 years, but it was her pride and joy during those years and not something I would have wanted to deprive her of.  It gave her meaning but at the same time I learned you had to be very careful not to mention you needed anything or liked anything because it would trigger her to go off on a quest to find something not-quite-the-same-but-fairly-similar at one flea-market or the other.

In my mind's eye there was always this uncomfortable nagging feeling that at some point in the future I would have to deal with all of the things she was amassing but it wasn't something that I felt I had any right to confront her on.

However, every time I visited her the hoard she had gathered had grown slightly bigger and so did my sense of discomfort in direct proportion.

In the midst of all this, my brother slept - snoring loudly.

Poor guy - he's passed out - I thought.

 ...and I was right even if I didn't fully realize how right I was until after I'd awoken him up and we'd talked for almost an hour and he couldn't restrain himself anymore and went to the fridge to pop open a beer from the duty-free store and started drinking it.

At that point I finally started looking around and saw the cans upon cans of beer, a schnapps bottle and a half-empty bottle of vodka that had been tucked away behind the lazy-boy.

This would explain the non-sense he's been making during our conversation over the last hour or so, why he's been cycling between shedding half-tears with random sentences and references to a difficult childhood.

A childhood where he was bullied for being the fat kid but responded by beating up all the bullies, where he was forced to baby-sit our autistic brother while his friends where outdoors playing soccer and I was locked away in my room playing on my computer.

I feel betrayed from within for having trusted him, for not having seen this coming, for having let my guard down.  Then I start thinking about tonight's open-casket memorial service he was planning....

Mother had requested to be buried with just her closest family and friends attending.

"I don't want you to be drunk tonight at mother's memorial service" - I plead

"That's not for you to decide" - he retorts

What's wrong with him? Mother had said he had been having some issues with alcohol for a long time but I wasn't expecting him to be as morally bankrupt from it as this appears.

"You're right - I can't decide that for you. I can however cancel the memorial service and I will as this is not something I want to be a part of nor do I want anyone's last memory of her to be one of you drunk beside her defenseless body"

He doesn't really answer that, I can't tell if he's too drunk to hear or care what I'm saying or if he's having second thoughts about going on a drunken binge in our deceased mother's apartment on the night she died and then holding a memorial service while still drunk.

I hope he is but I suspect he isn't.  This isn't my first time in Kansas, Dorothy.

I cancel the service, he stays in the apartment for the next 5 days, drinking the whole time.  I know because I check in on him a couple of times every day and every time I came he was either passed out or trying to pick an argument about nothing.
A million things we could have talked about during those days are left unsaid, the funeral arrangements, settling her estate, clearing out her apartment so it can be returned to the landlord...

The final straw for me comes when we are there with our niece and my wife and he started picking on her.

"Who are you anyway? what do you think you know about how she wanted the funeral arrangements to be made"

I couldn't contain my disappointment and anger anymore, hijacking everyone else's grief for his own purpose was one thing I could bear from him but verbally abusing one of the few persons who had selflessly given her time and love to a mother not her own when he had done neither was beyond cruel.

"WE KNOW BECAUSE WE ASKED HER WHILE SHE WAS STILL CONSCIOUS AND ABLE TO HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT IT.  WHY DID YOU COME HERE ANYWAY? FROM THE AMOUNT OF BOOZE YOU STOCKED UP ON IN THE DUTY FREE STORE IT SEEMS PAINFULLY OBVIOUS YOU PLANNED TO DO THIS FROM THE START? I THINK YOU'RE ACTUALLY PISSED OFF YOU HAD TO POSTPONE IT FOR THOSE LAST FEW HOURS THAT YOU SPENT WITH HER"

I know I shouldn't be shouting, it's only making things worse. I know he is as much a slave to the alcohol inside him as a caterpillar is enslaved by a parasitic wasp larva that takes control over its mental functions.

I know all this but that doesn't mean what he's doing hurts any less.
All I can do is to leave the apartment before things turn even more sour, this is not who I want to be.

In my fury I hurriedly grab what I believed to be a bag with her duvet that we were going to give to the funeral parlor for the casket, what we later discover is that even if it was the wrong bag it contained something else we had been looking for.

In the bag I grabbed, we find the silk shawl my wife had wrapped around my mother's shoulders to keep her warm during those last few days and which we wanted her to have with her on her last journey but that had gotten lost in the confusion following her passing.

Perhaps my mother was there with us, guiding my hand to find it, I'd like to believe so.