Love Is Strange In Yorkville in 1962

My brother, Rory, died September 16, 1998. I’m thinking of Rory today but my specific memory is seven weeks before his death on the night our mother died July 24th. Mom had a long ugly battle with dementia and cancer. I was glad she was at peace, out of pain. I thought Rory felt the same. But Dad was keening like he was a boy who had lost his first love. Dad didn’t leave the chair he slept in for days and never stopped crying. He was inconsolable and Rory and I kept giving each other looks like, “where's this coming from?” Our practiced impression was our parents had endured 47 years of professional level fighting as a couple and hardly liked each other and if they loved each other it was habit more than anything else. Rory and I kept thinking, “When is he going to snap out of it?” Dad didn’t snap out of it. He loved Mom with his whole damaged heart and though Rory and I were there for most of the war we didn’t see things clearly. We weren’t them, we were the kids and kids don’t know everything about their parents, period. You can never know everything about anybody. Rory couldn’t live without Mom. I never saw it coming. It’s hard enough to know yourself. I miss Rory, Mom & Dad, though we spent too much time loving each other in unusual ways.