All of my life, there have been many things that have been constant: my breathless beauty, my awesome sense of humor, my modesty, and my family. My family has always been there for me no matter what happened. I had more aunts, uncles, and cousins than I knew what to do with. Many times, I couldn't even tell you how we were related, I just always knew this person was my cousin. I don't know if it's a Portuguese thing, but we don't make many distinctions between a first cousin or an 81st cousin twice removed. If you were related to someone in their family tree at any point in time, then they're your cousin. So, I was related to...well...the Portuguese population in Danbury (Ok, that's an exaggeration. I was related to half of the Portuguese population and my family was friends with the other). While this meant I couldn't make a move anywhere without that information being beamed to my family through an intricate gossip network fashioned over generations that was remarkably efficient, it also meant I was surrounded by people who were looking out for me. Growing up with a big family that lived in the same town always made me feel connected. I knew if I needed anything, all I needed to do was walk down the street and knock on any number of doors and things would be ok. Growing up in such a tight knit community also meant I made friends that became a part of my family. People that would always be there for me through good times and bad. Like everything else, though, things change. People grow up, marry, have children, divorce and move.
Wow. I'm looking at this post now and wondering, "where the hell was I going with this?" I started writing this one in November 2015 and it is now June 2017 that I'm getting back to it and I have no clue what I was going to say next. I know what the original intention was, but I don't have any clue, at this point, where the hell I was going with the above paragraph. Have you ever had the experience of reading something you wrote in the past and thinking to yourself, "Damn. That was pretty good?" Well, I wish I could say I was having that experience right now, but my experience is probably more similar to that of a person with early onset dementia. You know, the "What the hell was I just doing?" thing. Wait...I actually do that a lot. Crap. I don't think that bodes well for me. Oh well. If it doesn't, I'll probably forget about it anyway.
Ok, I guess I should try to write about what I had originally set out to write about here. This post is about the loss of my brother. I know. I know. Some of you are thinking, "Uh...I don't think this is going to be a funny one" and to be honest with you, I'm not sure what the hell I"m going to say in this one as I'm just writing as I go. Oh, who am I kidding? I never know what the hell I'm going to say or write at any point in time, but I'm always pretty confident my language will be colorful (I'm a visual person, so I ask you to please imagine the scene in A Christmas Story where Ralphie is asking the department store Santa for his Red Rider BB gun with a compass in the stock and this things which tells time as he is hanging on for dear life at the top of the slide. Picture the smile he has on his face right before Santa kicks him down the slide...Got it? Now imagine my face on Ralphie's body. Ok. That's the image I want you to have of me when you think of me and my very colorful language).
Sorry, I realize I was rambling. I'll do my best to stay on topic. My brother. Now that he is gone, I can admit that he was always smarter than me, but I will also stand firmly by the claim that I was always funnier and better looking. And, since he's not here to argue with me, I'll hold that title for a very long time. I admit he was a damn good brother, son, husband, and kick ass father. I will also admit he was a slob who had to have the latest gadgets, even if they were pieces of crap. As an example, let me tell you a slob story. Growing up, his room was always a mess. His car was always a mess. He was like the real life version of Oscar Madison. One day, my family had gotten home after a long day at the store and I went upstairs to find our house had been broken into and the place was TRASHED. The upstairs kitchen (yes, my parents have two kitchens. If you're Portuguese, you're sitting here thinking, "Yeah. No kidding. So what?" because every Portuguese family you've ever known has two kitchens and you think it's weird that none of your American friends do) looked like a scene from The Sixth Sense when the lady had flung open all the kitchen cabinet doors, except all the stuff normally in the cabinets was all over the kitchen. It was a similar scene throughout the dining room, the living room (not the one we used to watch t.v. in and hang out in, but the living room that was decorated by a professional decorator when my parents bought the house in 1972 and, as such, could only be used for visiting dignitaries and maybe the Pope), and the bedrooms. My parents were visibly shaken and called the police as I walked around with my OCD kicking into overdrive thinking, "Holy crap! This is going to take FOREVER to clean up". When the police arrived, they asked to see the damage and walked through the house. My mother showed them the living room, kitchen, and then took them to the bedrooms. In my parents' house, as you go up the stairs to the bedrooms, my brother's room is the first room you come to. So, as my mother walked the police to the bedrooms, they looked at my brother's room and said, "So, they got this room, too?" At this point, my mother's face contorted in a way I had not seen before and her flesh turned colors that I did not think were humanly possible. I'm pretty sure I actually saw a flash of steam rise from her ears, but I have no scientific proof of that. In any case, in response to the officer's question, she fiercely grabbed my brother's bedroom door, slammed it shut, and manged to muster through gritted teeth, "No. His room always looks that way". As the color drained from my brother's face seeing the ire he had triggered in my mother, I laughed and said to him, "I don't know how you did it, but you managed to piss mom off even more than she already was" and I laughed down the hallway to my trashed room. Shortly after this incident, she directed him to clean his room and he gave her some flippant response along the lines of, "I'll clean it when I'm ready" or some other equally stupid thing to say to our mother. He tried to walk past her out of his room and, despite the fact that he was taller than her and weighed more, she still managed to push his butt back into his room and slammed the door with both of them still in there. I heard a lot of yelling, what I assumed to be the sounds of her trashing his room more, and the faint sounds of what I can only describe as him whimpering in submission realizing he would never again leave that room unless it was cleaned. I was so entertained by this that I sat in the hallway immediately outside his door chuckling as I imagined my own movie version of what I believed was going on behind that door. I soon realized I was chuckling too loudly as the door suddenly whipped open and my mother's face was unexpectedly staring at me saying, "If you're room isn't clean, I'm coming to you next" before disappearing back behind Chris' closed door. Now, I knew my room was clean because I was the Felix Unger of the family, but I was also not stupid, so I just got the hell out of there and entertained myself somewhere else.
I have many more stories like this, but I think I will share those sparingly as they bring a sort of bitter joy in recalling them. In any case, many of you know we lost my brother in October 2015 to colon cancer after only having been diagnosed 3 months earlier. I wish I could tell you there were funny stories to share around that time, but I don't remember any if there were. In any case, while those last 3 weeks he spent in the hospital will likely haunt me for years to come, I choose instead to focus on stories like the one I told above. Or the time I attempted to shave half his mustache and the other half of his beard for an April Fool's joke that went awry. Or the time I set all the clocks ahead by one hour the morning of his SATs. Or the time when we were playing wiffle ball at dusk and, what he thought was the ball being tossed to him, was actually a bat flying at him and he ran screaming like a little girl directly into our grandparents' picnic table and ended up on crutches. Or the time...nah. I'll save the rest.
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