Hope, Heart, and Crazy Wisdom: Good night, little brother

As I write, my youngest brother Alan is in the last days of his struggle against terminal cancer. Only 49, it is so strange to think that in a few days, give or take, he will be gone. For the last months of his life he has been in the care of my wonderful sister and her husband, for which I am grateful beyond words. The fact that he could come to the end of his life in a place that feels like home, is a gift that simply can't be measured.

We had a wild life growing up, my family. For a while in the 1960's it had the feel of American middle class life (belied a bit by the intense group of intellectual eccentrics we were developing into). But we had a small but nice house we lived in nestled in an old farm town in Massachusetts, and I remember those days mostly with happiness. We always had cats, and I remember a cold March day in the late sixties, when Alan, just a little boy, appeared one morning and said he had found mice in his bed, and not sure of what to do, he had put them out on the porch. What we actually discovered on the porch was a litter of kittens -- our one cat (at the time) had disdained the nice nest we had made for her when the time came to give birth, and had her kittens in Alan's bed. They were all fine (and some led long and memorable lives). And Alan had his start as a lifelong lover of cats.

Ten years later, our lives had radically changed. For reasons complex to me even now, we lost our grip on middle class life, and ended up what today would be called homeless (though that word, to my knowledge, hadn't been coined yet in the '70's). We lived in temporary apartments and in tents in the woods, traveling up and down the East Coast, and finally to California. A strange life to say the least, and one that shaped all of us in different ways. Here is Alan from that time, with another beloved cat, the Gray Shred, a sweet -- if somewhat demented -- kitty we had taken in as a stray with a permanently broken paw...and who had a special bond with Alan.

Below is the whole family (excepting my oldest brother, who had moved on to seek his own fortune by this time) as we were in that time in the late 70's. What a motley crew! Mum is gone now as well, having also succumbed to cancer, but we were an eclectic bunch in those days--I was writing (bad) novels already, and Alan's lifelong interest in the sciences had taken firm root.

As adults, we had our times of connection and disconnection with each other, and Alan became a brillant if reclusive figure, going into teaching, becoming a notable pool shark, and developing a strong philosophy of non-materialism (something we share).

After a long period in which we fell out of touch, Alan and I had a time of very lively re-connection, which I treasured then, and even more so now. We exchanged long letters and phone calls, and I felt so much delight to learn about his views and passions, many of which we had in common. Here are some of Alan's thoughts from those letters, first on non-materialism:

You may not be aware, but your cutting down your possessions, and then your whole living-in-the-woods minimalistic adventure, those things influenced me a youth. So some of our overlap in approach to living is not coincidence. But clearly my path towards enlightenment has been far more than a few childhood memories, but I thought you'd like to see that you played a small part. I do hope I can get my act together for a visit eventually.

On his life as a teacher:

I love the idea that we can look at one another and truly absorb what we are seeing, in a stepladder fashion of learning. I don’t see a lot of growth in most people, and the stagnation scares me. The more commercial and material we become, the more of that I see. But my anarchism still believes that the people are slowly awakening. It helps to teach as I do, where all my students are 18 or 19 (all freshman classes), even one young 17 yr old Taiwanese dude! They are a spoiled generation; the generation of kids getting trophies just for participating! But their minds are open, and I believe in youth's ability to recreate the world’s structure.

On our love of books:

Books are so powerful. I still believe that the need for keeping a book, like on a shelf in a room in the house, is overcome by the power of the simple mental and emotional residue of having read the book, which is not truly liberated without removing the actual book. So I read and discard the material book, but it will always be alive in my mind. And you actually create NEW books, which makes the whole process even more beautiful.

On love (which I of course rhapsodized on as transformative and transcendent):

Your comments on love made me a little sad for myself (but happy for you!). I have not found love yet, in the way the rest of the family has. I think I have been dealing with my autism, and that has held me back. I am unsure where I will end up on that front, but am still hopeful. I still think I have a lot to offer!

In reading his thoughts now, I'm sad too, at the thought that his life and dreams are cut short. But I told him that I loved him, and that I was glad we grew up to be friends. How I'll miss you, little brother...your abstract intellectualisms that made my head swim (though happily), balanced by your laugh and slacker-dude alternate persona. I'll miss the chance to see your many dreams come true.

Here is the last paragraph of the last letter he wrote to me:

Uh oh, I feel myself running out of steam, and still have "miles to go before I sleep", haha. I will get to work (on my studies of quasi-injective modules, which I believe may also hold a key to understanding consciousness). Later dude.

Later, dude. May you have peace, and I'll dream sometimes of the two of us as old men, laughing about it all. Good night, little brother.