Day After

“I want to die,” says my brother. “I’m dying.”

It is the day after the election. I’m sitting outside on my deck in desert silence. Everything looks parched. Skeletal. Yet plant bones sprout tiny green leaves. There’s even a mountain sage with a few scattered fuchsia blossoms.

“Joshua,” I say, “you don’t mean that.”

My brother can be dramatic. “I’m just a big fat brain,” he used to blurt. “That’s all I am.” He calls his dogs furry Prozac. But, we lost our mother to depression and suicide when we were kids, so I’m not taking any chances. I settle in for a long call — as long as it takes.

I know in the past I’ve tensed up at times like this. Hammered him with positivity. Please, God. Let me be light. Anything to stem the darkness I know so well.

It’s hard for me to write this.

A, I’m rusty. I’ve been hiding in an emotional and spiritual tunnel, burrowing, cloaking, post-pandemic, post-10.7. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to act.

B, I’m so raw — so filled with fierce love and fear for my brother — I can barely breathe.

I dig into the grab bag of Hail Mary moves I made to escape my last toxic relationship — breathwork, Kundalini, naked love-yourself workshops, Burning Man, personal shamans, remote soul retrieval, cold plunges…ayahuasca. “Let me tell you a story,” I say.

“The first time I did ayahuasca, plant ceremony, I thought I was going to battle good and evil. You know. Beat down family demons. Kick over the ancestral traces.

“Instead, I sat like a Buddha in a puddle of light, breathing, eyes open, calm, blissed out, while everyone turned iridescent. Their skin. Their eyes. Their auras. The world was one big sparkle.

“I watched everyone living their stories. Each one seemed barricaded in a make-believe prison. Their faces contorted. Their bodies writhed. Some scribbled madly in journals.

“I didn’t turn away.

“I saw the stories, the people struggling in their fishing-net narratives, same as I do in my work.

“I sat outside.

“I smiled at each person who looked at me, and I saw them drink it in.

“I was the Storyteller.

“Joshua,” I say, “I love you so much. There are other stories. Other ways to look at things right now.”

“We’re all screwed,” he says.

I offer different ways of seeing, different stories, simply to consider. So many.

“Think of story like a pair of glasses, Joshua. Take them off, snap the stems, crunch the lenses with your Doc Martens. Break the frame.”

“Rachel, I wear slip-on mocs now. Merrells. Moccasins for middle-aged white people.”

I can feel him grinning. For a moment, I lean in. Bask in the shift, that bit of sunlight. Then, too fast, I feel my brother’s grin slip away, replaced again by grim eyes, tight mouth.

“Honestly, the only thing keeping me alive is the dogs,” he says. 

“Why not tell a better story,” I say quietly.

We fall silent for some time, with only the creak of paws on hardwood floors.

“Be the storyteller,” I say.

Three hours later, I say something stupid, and my brother and I laugh.

A hummingbird buzzes my face.