I’m sitting at my dining room table in the dark with my laptop and half of a bottle of Maker’s Mark.  C and I bought it to celebrate New Year’s Eve with our own party of two on the balcony of our hotel overlooking the Savannah River.  We drank half of the bottle then, in our pajamas, smoking cigarettes and remarking how relieved we were that it had occurred to us that our room came with a balcony and we didn’t need to squeeze ourselves into the New-Year’s crowds waiting for hours on the Savannah riverfront or up on a rooftop bar that charged a fortune for the privilege of being there.  24 hours we’d been at that place, wondering where we could position ourselves to glimpse the fireworks without having to actually socialize with other people. 

That’s the kind of people we are.  Smart.  But not so smart.  So we parked ourselves on the narrow balcony with some prosecco and some Maker’s Mark and watched lame fireworks on this New Year’s Eve.  Our neighbor who blows up the neighborhood every fourth-of-July puts on a better show, sadly, than the city of Savannah did this year. This is a city that prides itself on two holidays–St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve–but it “dropped the ball” on this occasion. 

Hey, I’m not complaining.  We didn’t plan to go to Savannah to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  We had planned to go there just because we’d never been and—months ago—it seemed like a good time to go, considering that we’d probably spend Christmas with Dad and new a few buffer days in-between before hitting the road again, and just before C and I had to go back to work.  Those were the plans just a few months ago.  Once again, our world changed brutally and abruptly.

So we went to Savannah after my dad died.  It was a lovely distraction, but I knew it for that–I always knew, at every juncture that I should probably be grieving.  We drank all day on December 30^th, starting with a welcome glass of champagne at check-in for being special traveling members of the hotel chain, ending in the hotel bar, ordering purple cocktails that I cannot name at last-call.  I could barely walk during our ghost tour earlier that evening, over cobblestones and down into cramped basements.  I don’t remember what the tour guide told us, but I remember feeling like we were characters in a big charade, nineteenth-century folks ooooing and ahhhhhing over the freaks in the circus tent. But without the freaks or anything so interesting.  After the ghost tour, we made our late dinner reservation at a place that I should have been truly present to experience.  I can’t really remember the food—just some fuzzy images and C’s reminders the next day of how fucking brilliant those wings were, the wings that earned the restaurant a Michelin star. Each day in Savannah began later, with clouded heads and clouded emotions and more adventures with unsustainable habits.

Savannah is a beautiful city, though.  I think it’s the most beautiful city I have ever seen.  Still, every once in a while, something would trigger me, and I’d start crying, seemingly at random.  Wild new thoughts would hit me at inopportune times.  The biggest bash in the head was the realization that I don’t have a place to go home to anymore.  I have my brother, but we’re not so close despite these months of bringing us somewhat closer.  I can’t just announce that I’m going to come up and stay with him.  It puts me in position I have never been in before—I can’t go home without an invitation.  My brother and I, we still have some communicating to do, or—rather—to practice.  He asked me on Friday, two days after Dad died, when I was planning on coming back.  The only answer that came to me was maybe in a couple of weeks, because I thought I might be able to deal with it in a couple of weeks. 

In truth, I am putting off going back up there because I can’t face going into Dad’s apartment.  It’s too soon, and I just can’t turn around and go back like that.  I’ll have a breakdown on the threshold of the place.  It dawned on me though, that my brother might think I don’t want to come up and claim what I want of Dad’s things.  He’s so efficient, already taking trips to the Goodwill and divvying up the stuff.  Wants me to tell him what I want.  I don’t know what I want.  Maybe I want that marble ashtray that he used for his cigars, or maybe I want his cane with the handle that unfolds into a little seat, so he could take a load off when the walking got too much.  Maybe I should just go up there and do what I need to do.  But just thinking about the five hours in the car each way… damn, I’ll cry myself off the road. 

I can’t be with people, but I can’t be alone, if that makes any sense.  So I wrote an email to my brother because I can express myself better in writing than in any other way.  I told him how I felt, and I told him to call me, and he did. It’s hard to START a communicating with a sibling with whom you have never really had a close relationship.  Miscommunication can happen in crisis, even among people who are close.  I thought I was walking on eggshells, but he told me it’s all good. He said my uncle, my dad’s littlest brother, probably couldn’t come up for the same reason. He got me.

We let politics get in the way for a long time. My big brother is so much kinder than I gave him credit for, so much more intuitive, so much smarter, so very ethical and thoughtful. I understand now why his wife acts like she does–defensive, territorial, protective–around me. I have been the snarky lefty, and my brothers have been the imaginary enemy for a long time now. I’ve been the fly in the ointment and the abrasive other side of shit. It’s been a battle, when it should have been a bonding. We shouldn’t HAVE TO BOND while someone we love is dying, but in these waters, death and tragedy are the only way we’re going to connect and maybe even get us to another level. 

My big brother likes to be organized–he got that shit from our mother–he likes everything in its place and things to be where they need to be. He sends me pictures of Dad’s stuff, and I pick out the piece or pieces that I can’t live without from among the piles, and he sets them aside for me. I don’t know where his mind is, but I know he’s hurting. He’s the oldest son, the man in charge, and perchance he didn’t ask for that title, but that’s what he got. He was the first. When he was born, my mom was nineteen, and my dad twenty-one, and I’m not even sure my dad was present for the birth of his first child. He and my other brother who I can’t bring myself to talk about got the young–the very young–parents. I got the ones in their thirties. 

But I believe I started this reverie with a bottle of Maker’s Mark, or half.  It’s still there.  I got it out my bag when I decided sleep wasn’t coming and brought it to the dining room table as an option.  But I don’t want it.  I really don’t want it.  I’m staring at it now with more curiosity than actual desire to consume.  I’m so tired of booze.