Dark and Mysteriousness: Dedicated to My Big Brother

My older brother knows me best as my 15-year-old self. He remembers the hours I spent locked in my room listening to Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" over and over.* He remembers the guilt I felt when Kurt Cobain died because I knew if I had just somehow been able to meet him and talk to him, I could have convinced him not to do it.* He remembers the hours I spent writing in notebooks and journals musings that were promptly destroyed, to be read by no one.

As he tells his wife, what he remembers is "Kelly always wanted to be dark and mysterious."

This weekend he told her he is disappointed that between my two blogs, I haven't written anything dark and mysterious yet. Probably he's realizing that he doesn't really know me after all. Probably he was hoping I would do something creative and lucrative with my darkness and mysteriousness. Probably he doesn't realize how hard it is to be dark and mysterious when you spend your days wiping poopy butts and trying to remove spit-up from your clothes.

So though I don't think I have it in me to be the dark and mysterious blogger my brother is hoping for, I do think I have some morbid in me. So just for my big brother, I present "Eulogy." That's right. I'm writing his eulogy for him....what I would say at his wake were he to die tomorrow. How's that for morbid? He has a birthday coming up in a few weeks. Maybe I'll frame it for his present.

My earliest memories of my big brother are bittersweet; we always had that kind of relationship. When I was 5, when we had gotten into trouble for something or other (hanging out with Jason always resulted in getting in trouble), he told me we were going to run away together. He had it all planned out, he informed me, but he didn't quite have enough money for both of us yet. So he decided to let me go first--very generous soul that he was--and he would come as soon as he had enough money. But I should go ahead and leave. He'd find me and take care of me. Really.

When I was around 8, he recruited me to help him with a project. I was ecstatic to be included in anything my older brother was doing, and as I was angry at my sister at the time, I was especially excited about the project itself: mutilating her favorite Marie-doll. We burned her little dolly butt. We stabbed her with kitchen knives....repeatedly. We tied a noose around her neck and hung her from the garage ceiling. We beheaded her and put her decapitated head in our unsuspecting sister's underwear drawer. And to make sure she was aware of everything her precious doll had suffered, we documented it all with Jason's flash-cube camera. Of course, when I say "we," I mean "Jason." All I really did was watch. And hold the doll for the camera. So that all the pictures just showed me holding the tortured mass of well-loved fabric and plastic. So that all the evidence pointed to me. This was about the time he really got the reputation of being the "bad kid" in the family (did he really think my mom wouldn't notice that the pictures were developed off his camera, or that someone had to actually be the one to hold the camera?).

But the same year he offered to run away with me, he revealed the secret of the Arby's wrapper to my sister and I...that if you found a star on your Arby's wrapper (there was an odd repeating pattern on their wrappers back then that resulted in a star only showing up occasionally), you could put it under your pillow, and the Arby's pirates (whoever they were) would replace it with a prize. The first time I found a star wrapper, I was ecstatic. I excitedly put it under my pillow after bragging profusely to my siblings about being the first to receive a pirate prize. I fell asleep dreaming of the dime I may find there in the morning. And when I woke, I tore the pillow off my bed to see what I had been left.

I know what you're thinking. I had been fooled again, because I was the gullible little sister and he was the prankster brother.

But when I threw my pillow to the floor that morning, I found a toy resting on my bed where the long-awaited star wrapper had been the night before. I don't remember what the toy was, because that wasn't what was worth remembering. What I remember is knowing as I stared at my trinket that it was Jason's toy. He had given it to me so I wouldn't be disappointed. And I never told him that I knew. Maybe I should have...maybe when he hit his troubled times in his teens (and didn't we all?) it would have helped to know that not everyone thought he was a bad kid. That I knew the compassion he was capable of. But I never told him that I knew.

And I never thanked him for the times when we were both teenagers and I snuck out...and helped me to do it, but then checked up on me. Or for how he threatened every guy I ever dated, but never told my mom what I was up to. Or for telling my mom what I was up to but making her let him handle it...by teaching me to drive his car when I was 14 and using the time to talk to me about boys.

Or for continuing that legacy of protection with my little girl.

So, Jason, wherever you are, thank you. And I promise to be as much a jerk to your little girl as you were to me...because everyone needs someone like that when they are growing up.

Hmmm....definitely not dark and mysterious. Sorry to burst your bubble bro. And thank you. Don't make me say what for...we never were the "share your emotions" members of the family. Just thank you.

*Hey readers...feel free to make fun of my profusely for this in the comments box below. I would if I were you.