Brother / Mother

On the day this week that a support group for sibling survivors of suicides held its regular monthly meeting, I tripped on the way to work, tumbling to the sidewalk wearing a pair of my late brother's jeans that I'd kept. I tore the knee pant, scraped and bruised my knee and elbow. I was shaken for a few days.

Later that week I read an essay devoted to Jean Harris in the Times, read of her anger and scorn and petty vindictiveness and despair and "brittle pride" and "florid hysteria." One woman said to the author, "I haven't thought about her for a long time;" the other replied, "neither had I."

I thought of my own mother then, and how, in her own, unique way, she and Harris must have been alike, and I thought of my late brother Steven. He must have absorbed many of these traits too early, too well, perhaps the most toxic ones. Yet he also understood and recognized some of those same things about my mother, too completely.

But perhaps not enough about himself.