My Other Brother

My other brother exists only in pictures. We never talk. In fact I don't remember the last time he and I conversed at all, though I'm sure at some point we must have. Nothing remains in my memory, though.

But looking inside a box of old slides Larry again is a little baby lying innocently in a bassinet. Months later there's a shot of him standing in his crib and looking out at the camera. The wall behind him is painted light brown; except for a wooden cutout of a cow jumping over half-moon hanging above Larry's head, it is otherwise bare. However just outside the frame, I’ll bet a dish is running away with a spoon.

The next picture in the sequence shows Larry sound asleep in his high chair in the kitchen. He's out like a light, head flat on the tray, and totally oblivious to the activity going on around him. It must've been a very full day because little Larry looks totally tuckered out. The image is priceless. I love this picture.

Finally there's a shot with me in it. I'm a toddler sitting on a bench next to big brother Larry. My hand is pushing on his left shoulder, like he just told a funny joke and I'm saying, "Aw, get outta here!"  Bigger brother Steve is on the other side of Larry and he's smiling too, so something's funny. But I'm too little to really be in on the joke. It’s a happy family picture, though.

Then there's a slide of Steve and Larry splashing and playing in a plastic pool in the back yard, and one with the two of them at Disneyland. I'm not there though. Either I was being grounded or still too little. As young as I was then, I think it’s likely the latter.

Next in the series, there's a shot of us three boys grouped together, all topless and mooning for the camera. It must've been summer. Back then we were all toe-headed blonds, and big brother Steve’s got 'charmer' written all over him. Me? Though it's probably not fair to label a little kid ugly, the camera doesn't lie either. Heck, at two years old, I was ugly. On a scale of 1 to 10, I was probably a '4', and it’d be a generous '4' at that. Good Lord, look at those big ears! Yikes. Throw in the chubby cheeks and an overbite, and I look like a small beaver.

But Larry, he's the '10' in our group. And if he was Mom's favorite, who could blame her? At 5 years old, I'm sure even the little girls were already swooning over him.

A few photographs later there's a portrait of the whole family. It's a nice looking spring day in, what I guess, was our backyard. In the foreground, Dad's in a suit and Mom's wearing a nice dress and holding me in her lap. But, shoot, I look about 3 by then, which is way too big to be held, right? So I'm sure they didn't get me to sit that way without a fuss and likely why I’m being held. Steve's to the right of Mom and me, and Larry's off to the side of the grouping, next to Dad. However the cute smile Larry flashed in all the earlier pictures is missing. Instead, he just looks sad. That, or in pain. Either way, he doesn't look very happy.

The final picture was taken in late May. It's a gorgeous southern California day- the place where we were all born- and it looks like the folks have taken us out on a picnic in the country. The setting is somewhere in the Antelope Valley, long before the encroachment of urban sprawl, and we're running in a field of bright yellow poppies under a bright spring midday sun. My two brothers and I are holding hands and walking away from the camera, I'm in the middle between Steve and Larry. The image is awash in lively colors and the limitless potential of youth.

Larry died a couple weeks after that picture was taken. Childhood leukemia took him at age 6. 

And I don't remember that at all. But I've been told that for quite a while after he was gone, I kept asking Mom "Where's Larry?" It made her sad, but as patiently as she could, would always answer, "Your brother's gone to heaven."  Huh? I had no idea what that meant, but it must've satisfied my childish curiosity because, I’m also told, my demands for a more tangible answer eventually petered out.

That was a long time ago. But the pain was so deep, for many years Mom had a hard time even mentioning Larry's name. Parents are not supposed to bury their children.

Yet I've always wondered how things would've turned out had Larry never died; if the family birth order stayed the same-- three boys with me as the baby. Would the life paths Steve and I ended up taking remained unchanged? I don't know. And what would Larry have grown up to be? And how would it be with all three of us as adults now?

I don't know.

But I also wonder if Mom and Dad would have stopped at three kids. My sister didn't come along until after Larry's death. So would they have had another kid anyway,  or had they stopped with me, would Sue have been born at all?

I don't know.

All I know for sure is that someday I'll get the answers to all these questions, because someday, I'm going to see my other brother in heaven. And that's going to be a great time. Some days I can hardly wait.

We have a lot to catch up on.