so, my little brother’s birthday is today. he would be turning 42, if he hadn’t passed away from me & this world at just 37. i miss him every single day. every. single. day. but even more on sundays & holidays, anniversaries & birthdays. he always made time for me; he actually & literally saved my life after i got divorced for the second time & he moved in with me, coming up to gainesville from the keys. he loved the sea, yet for me he moved inland, as he had once before when he gave everything he had of himself to his wife and she wanted to move to from fort lauderdale to atlanta (unfortunately they divorced years before he passed away). he was one of the sweetest, kindest, most compassionate people i have ever known. he was an angel child & i learned a lot about parenting from him, being his big sister by 10 & 1/2 years. i hope everyone who ever knew or loved him thinks kindly of him today. he was so scared of getting his hair washed; that was my job, bathing him at night. we developed a method of rinsing the shampoo out that worked, and he was the cutest little frogman playing in that tub of suds! what a person he was! how much he taught me about love, and living! and, somewhere where i cannot yet completely see or hear him, i know he still IS. my baby brother was a real, genuine MAN.
Tag Archives: grief
my little brother was born on june 12, 1971, in fort lauderdale, florida, at holy cross hospital
Filed under notes
signs from god, a poem
SIGNS FROM GOD
(originally published in the Xavier Review)
My eyes in the mirror have become
creatures unto themselves.
Still I look for some sign,
some indication, some forecasting
of the sorrow. Who could have predicted
within your final coronet of silver wisps,
you would hold an old halo of copper
rings to your pale, pale skin,
and that you would possess, too,
a luscious pair of purpled shadows
under your dying eyes: all of which
led, ultimately, to this prayer.
Adrift this way, it’s getting easier
to interpret things as signs
from God; the heavens always moan
best just before dawn… this trembling
world is more bizarre than even I,
the temporary visitor
from another planet, had imagined.
Blood-drained corpses line the path,
lightning scorches the road.
Things I once took
for granted, being lucky, vanish.
I wanted to be with you
when your soul left. The rest
without you will be forever
a near miss. On the way
to the funeral home, a seagull
sank like a stone in the ocean
of air, through the flat broad sky —
the whiteness of the feathers
(so white!) — how they blew
in the wind after it landed,
like tender fingers praying, praying.
Let me pretend one last time
you’re my mother, or my lover.
Filed under poetry
on contemplating your death, a poem
ON CONTEMPLATING YOUR DEATH
(originally published in the Panhandler Magazine)
This is not heroism, this slow
nod to absolutes, numb acquiescence
to facts. I perform the worst
sort of cowardice: cutting the lines
free before it’s over. I can feel
the steps away from you, the slow
casting off from love, the mournful
horns, departing from this foggy
land of illness. When you didn’t
know me, when your hands danced
above the forgotten teacup, squeezing
a lemon primly into thin air,
you had a kind of ruddy stubbornness
I was shocked to see. After that,
your pale and knowing return was
anticlimax. You had gone another
way, in your blue cap, your skin hot,
glossy as if with fever, the surface
papery-soft but no longer familiar.
I hoped you were angry once more,
even as you slept. I expected to
cry more, to feel something else,
to be more like you. Nothing here
is how I imagined it, not this slow
nod to absolutes, not this languid
overflow of salt water — aching
bones, a past no longer claimed.
Filed under poetry
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 
