The Grief From Losing a Brother Literally Broke a Good Man's Heart: A Love Story.
In trying to find a funny, irreverent way to introduce what's going to be for me a pretty weighty and emotional topic, it occurred to me that brother relationships are complicated. I mean, they must be. I was searching through my mental database trying to come up with a pop culture reference about brothers who get along and love being around each other. I invite you to do the same. It's not easy. Even the one I landed on above is just between a con artist and the unsuspecting, lovable man-child he's trying to swindle.
In the first story ever told, Cain murdered Abel because Dad (their Creator) liked him better. Romulus killed Remus in an argument over who gets to name their hometown, which is pretty bad behavior even by the standard of boys who were suckled by a She Wolf. Virtually all of your positive male figures in fiction are loners. And most of them, have no siblings at all. Heroes. Superheroes. All your American icons like Clint Eastwood and John Wayne characters. The same goes for the great antiheroes. Tony Soprano had an annoying shrew of a sister who schemed behind his back every chance she got, but their parents stopped with her.
Show me a fictional family with a lot of brothers, and I'll show a web of dysfunction. Michael Corelone was forced into taking over the family when Sonny was killed, and put that halfwit Fredo on the bottom of Lake Tahoe. The family in Succession is a collection insufferable, conniving narcissists who hate each other even more than their father does.
The only time you'll find brotherly relationships in TV and movies, they're not actually related. Just guys thrust together in pursuit of some noble cause. Easy Company in Band of Brothers. The Fellowship of the Ring. The Rebel Alliance. Your Avengers and Justice League. But imagine trying to pitch an idea about a tight-knit family where literal brothers who enjoy each other's company get together and then a plot happens? It would never get past the pitch meeting. You'd have a better shot of portraying a father who's not a criminal, a deadbeat dad, or a useless, doofus-y simpleton who's the dumb one in the family. And that ain't happening, either.
I bring this all up to address the real life struggle my own family is having. That started with this:
And then quickly led to this:
My world got distressingly smaller in the span of just a few days. If I can talk in sports metaphors (why stop now?) for a second, the Thornton family went from skating a full shift to my other brother Bill, our sister Janice and me killing a two-man power play for the rest of our lives. It's been traumatic and we're dealing with the tragedy in our own ways, along with our brothers' own families. One of mine is to talk about it here, which helps process what's been happening. But only in the context of bringing up couple of larger truths that I hope makes sense. And does some good for somebody other than just me.
The first being that, with all due respect, I find it weird and morbid to focus on the way someone died, and not the way they lived their life with the time they were given. I've never been a fan of the "roadside memorial" thing, where you put a cross up at the site of a car crash. If you want to drop a couple of roses on the spot, Bruce Wayne-style, go ahead. I hope that brings you comfort. But why not remember the departed at the place they were happiest, instead of the place where they drew their last breath next to a bunch of styrofoam coffee cups and burger wrappers on the shoulder of the road?
But that said, some manners of death deserve special recognition. Heroic sacrifices, obviously. First responders. Members of the armed forces. Rescue workers, and so on. “There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.” - John 15:13. But if there's a close second to that love, I believe it is this. When you cared about someone so much that losing them is more than your heart can take, as tragic as that certainly is, it's also deeply beautiful.
And life-affirming. Proof that we're not just highly evolved apes who turn into nothing after we shuffle off this mortal coil. There's more to us than mere flesh, blood, and electrical impulses passing as consciousness. There are other, greater forces at work on a plane of existence we can barely comprehend. And they are eternal.
Believing that Jack died as a result of grief over the loss of Jim is not just a coping mechanism by their survivors. It's medical science. Confirmed by the doctors who treated him at different hospitals over the course of a week:
Source - Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a temporary heart condition that develops in response to an intense emotional or physical experience. It’s also known as stress cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome.
In this condition, the heart’s main pumping chamber changes shape, affecting the heart’s ability to pump blood effectively.
The heart’s chamber looks similar to a Tako -Tsubo pot, which is a Japanese fishing pot used to catch octopus.
My brother had dealt with health issues in the past, including heart ailments. It had been 34 years since his first incident. And in that time, he survived annual trips up Mt. Katahdin in Maine, hikes across a razor-edge cliff with thousand foot drops on either side, a skiing accident that fractured ribs and put him in a hospital, a sailing trip in a squall that almost capsized the boat, a million rounds of golf, countless hours of yard work, and the 18-1 Patriots losing to the Giants. But he couldn't survive this. If you can't find a sad beauty in that, I don't have words to explain it to you.
The other point I'm hoping to make takes me back to the dynamic between brothers. I've made this point before in other contexts, but the debate about Nature vs. Nuture - whether we are products of our heredity or our environment - is one that has fascinated philosophers, psychologists, doctors and sociologists for millennia. And it drove the plot of every third or fourth episode of The Three Stooges. And it's occurred to me during this week of weeks how much I owe my existence to my brothers and sister. How a shy, awkward, introverted kid watched how his siblings interacted with the world, and just learned to imitate the best of what I saw in them. I've been doing it nonstop my whole life.
As far as Jack goes, if life is a test, I've been copying off his paper. Anyone who's read a word I've written here or listened to a word I've said has been getting his thoughts, second hand. I mean, we would differ in our opinions once in a while. But the way mine have been delivered was pure him. Especially - but by no means limited to - when it came to the Patriots.
The first sporting event I ever went to was a Pats game when I was 13. Jack, Bill, our cousin Phil (RIP to him as well) took me because tickets were cheap and very much available. And because we'd lost our dad three years earlier, so that Father-Son trip to Fenway most boys get never happened. As bad as the Patriots were at the time generally speaking, and as much as that stadium was the worst venue in the history of professional sports, the imprint it left was permanent. To this day I can't be a tailgate scene and smelling the charcoal grills cooking without that sense memory kicking in.
Jack and I went alone a few years later to watch the 2-12 Patriots fall to 2-13 on the way to securing the worst record in the league (and blowing the No. 1 pick on DT Ken Sims of Texas). The vivid memory of that one is how, while the Pats weren't putting up any kind of a fight, most of the 30,000 or so drunken Massholes in the stands were fighting. Amongst themselves. As the game got out of hand and the 50th or so degenerate got frog-walked up the stairs past us, teenage me grabbed a security guard and asked, "I'm just a kid here, and obviously not drinking. So what can I do to get thrown out too?"
As the decades went on, we added spouses and I had kids, and the Patriots remained the major interstate connecting my brain to his. We celebrated the day Bill Parcells was hired. The same day Will McDonough (the Bronze Age Adam Schefter) went on national morning radio to declare the Pats were moving to St. Louis, a secret deal was being struck between the team owner and an obscure cardboard box magnate to keep them in New England. That night took our long-suffering wives out to dinner to celebrate, putting the reservation under the name "Kraft."
Jack became an administrator for the Patriots Planet message board. Also it's best contributor. And woe be to anyone who went on their to bully the other posters or personally attack them. To tell someone her opinions don't count because women don't understand football was to unleash the whirlwind of a thousand hurricanes. On the site, Jack used the handle Hawg73, in honor of his favorite Hall of Famer:
As a matter of fact, when I was a kid we watched an entire Pats-Cowboys game focused solely on the interior line battle between John Hannah and Randy White like it was Pedro vs. Clemens in the ALCS. Because he always had that insane ability to watch a football game and, in real time, tell you who missed a block and which guard blew a hole open on which defensive tackle. It was astonishing. And if he's not using that power, it would save me a lot of rewinding the DVR.
Jack was the first person I knew to embrace Tom Brady, saying he wanted him as his QB and never look back. A certified NFL Draft savant, he had didactic memory of mid-round offensive linemen and lowly regarded prospects from small schools. I was with him in 2005 when the Pats took Logan Mankins at a time I didn't see guard as an area of need. "I swear I've never heard this man's name before," I said. "I had them taking him in the 2nd round," he replied. I defy anyone else outside their personnel department to say the same. That's when Round 1 was held on Saturday at noon. I remember Monday sharing that story with my buddy from work who interrupted to say, "You and your brother didn't actually sit there and watch that crap all day, did you?" "Only the first eight hours," I said.
But it's in introducing me to his website, reading his insights, observations, way of looking at things, his abilty to turn football into humor and the world's hatred for the Dynasty Patriots into internet gold that changed my life for good. He invented a brilliant gimmick called "The Belislator," where he'd take Bill Belichick's evasive non-answers and translate them into what was actually going on inside his diabolical brain. I was genius. And I knew I wanted to do some version of that kind of content. He gave me the platform to do it. One time I experimented by posting a random series of disconnected observations from a game, and calling them Knee Jerk Reactions. One of which I emailed to Dave Portnoy as a writing sample. And the reply came back, "You're hired. It doesn't pay anything." Not a minute has gone by since without me being grateful I took the gig anyway.
That's just the football part of what he gifted me. I won't even get into all the other interests that were his before they were mine. The first R-rated comedy I ever saw was the same guys who took me to Foxboro getting me into see Animal House. Most of the jokes were over my head. But it taught me this is what grown men laugh at. This is how they act around each other. This is the music they like. This is how they break each other's balls, and so on. And I haven't watch that movie since … about a month ago. I can always use a refresher.
But beyond that, my interests from UFOs to Sci-Fi, Lord of the Rings to what music I like, from movies to the unexplained mysteries of the universe all come from my brothers and sister. Jack especially. If I could, I'd relive every precious moment we spent drinking craft beers, smoking cigars and talking about Sasquatch, I would. For now, all I can do is hold up my side of the conversation until it's God's will we see each other again. And to thank him for all he's given me. While taking comfort he's away from Jim, Phil, and the rest of our loved ones no more.
Thanks for reading. Sorry I went on so long. I hope this helps somebody besides me. I'll be back with the usual Lowest Common Denominator garbage as soon as I can. Call your family.