December 2003, four years old, I walked inside a house smelling of pumpkin bread. I embraced my grandparents, receiving wet kisses and a fresh slice. Stumbling over to my uncle, I jumped into his lap, and he gave me one of his notorious nuggies.
“Colin, not so hard. Not so hard, Colin!” reprimanded my mother.
“Heh, heh. No. Not hard,” he responded, still grinning down at me. I felt his body radiate joy.
The glimmer of reflection in his eye was intoxicating. I sat on his warm, jiggly thigh waiting for his leg to bounce and my dad to come and start singing “Wheels on the Bus.” Colin enjoyed children songs, almost more than I did. In fact, he loved everything kids loved: nursery rhymes, Cartoon Network, ice cream in the morning, and lollipops—oh, how he loved lollipops.
My dad skipped over. Colin began bobbing his leg to the beat of the Barney theme song blasting from the television.
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
round and round,
round and round.
“Faster, faster Colin!” I exclaimed. He giggled.
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
all through the town.
The Barney theme song stopped, so Colin did too. He lost interest in our game and began watching the screen with similar admiration as he had just been looking at me.
“Can we watch Tom and Jerry, Colin?”
“No,” he said sternly and immediately erupted into laughter at the talking purple dinosaur on the TV.
December 2005, I had begun speech lessons at my school. As my peers partook in reading time, my teacher escorted me to the special education room down the hall. I didn’t know most of the kids there, but a few were just like Colin. They were much younger than my uncle, but they reminded me of him. I came home from school that day, marching into the kitchen. My mother was preparing a pork stew, nodding her head to the static jazz playing through the stereo.
“What’s wrong with Colin?” I yelled over the music. My mom turned and looked at me, tilting her head. After pausing the music, she sat me down and told me the story of Colin’s birth. Pulling out salad tongs for reference, she explained forceps delivery and how during his birth, “Colin’s head got squished by the doctor’s tools.”
“Did it hurt him?” I asked.
“I don’t know honey, but I would assume so. His brain was permanently damaged. That’s why Colin’s special. But he’s the same amazing Colin he will always be. And he loves you so very much, my love.” I stared back at her.
December 2007, my dad, brothers, and I were getting ready to take Colin out to our annual trip to Wendy’s. “Colin, put some pants on! What, are you gonna stay in pajamas all day, Mr. Sloppy? Guess where we are going to lunch today?” My dad mirrored the same warmth in his voice I found in Colin’s. He spoke to my uncle with such tenderness; the corners of my mouth stretched in a toothy smile as I watched the two .
“Goin’ to the Club. Dad’s at the Club,” Colin stated firmly from the leather recliner chair in the living room.
“No, Col. We’re going to Wendy’s!” my dad cheered.
“Wendy’s, Col!” my younger brother repeated. Colin laughed.
My mother stopped singing along to Jack Johnson in the kitchen to shout, “You lucky dog, Col!”
In the restaurant my brothers and I would switch off trying to impress our uncle, whether it be chugging our Pepsi, touching our tongue with our nose, or telling him about the movie, Ratatouille, we saw last night.
“There was a cooking rat, Col! Yeah, he was a better chef than Daddy!”
“Haha. Last night, was watching channel 44. Indiana Jones. Channel 44. He’s a cowboy, you know that?”
I looked up at him. “Yeah, I’ve seen that movie. It's one of my favorites! I’ll check it out. What channel, Col?”
“Channel 44.”
On the way home, we all sang at the top of our lungs. Singing quickly became pitchless screeching, but we continued nonetheless.
The Driver on the bus says, “Move on back, move on back, move on back;”
The Driver on the bus says, “Move on back,” all through the town.
Colin chuckled.
September 2012, my mother told me Colin was sick. Hitting the third red light in a row, she looked at me and stumbled over her words. “They found a tumor in Colin. He’ll probably be fine, but you should know… and he has to get removal surgery next week.”
“Alright,” I said. I felt as though I should cry but I had no urge to. “Alright,” I repeated. The light turned green.
December 2012, I spent the ride from the airport thinking about Colin. What does someone with cancer look like? What does Colin with cancer act like? I wondered if his face would be a different color, hair thinner, eyes dimmer. Walking into the Floridian household, I braced myself for something I was not sure of yet.
“Heh-heh-hey, Liddia.”
“Hi, Colin!” I ran over to him lying in his recliner chair, watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Mickey was trying to find his lost friend. “What’s up Col, you feelin’ okay?”
“Yup. Went to the doctor!” He lifted up his ratty Transformers shirt to reveal a raw J-shaped scar on his lower stomach. I looked down at him and gave an uncomfortable smile.
“Nice! That’s cool Col, did it hurt?”
Colin grinned and made a scissor cutting motion with two fingers. “You know what movie I watched last night?” he gleamed.
December 2014, I sat on the wicker chair beside Colin as we watched Ed, Ed, and Eddie. His 300-pound giggle vibrated the floors, making the picture frames on the wall rattle. Colin never liked the shades open. My mother tried to sneak them open as he started to drift asleep but was met with a loud “Nooo!” A giggled followed, lighting up the room with his smile instead.
The doors on the bus go open and shut,
Open and shut,
Open and shut.
The doors on the bus go open and shut,
all through the town.
Colin turned his head to me. “Saw soldiers coming home last night. Channel 62. Soldiers coming home to their families.”
“Is that right Col? Channel 62? I like that show.”
“Yeah?” he asked in an eager high-pitched whisper.
“Oh yeah! Love that show. Do you like it?”
“Heh-heh, yeah.” Light still shined in Colin’s eyes, just as it did when I was still small enough to sit on his lap.
As his wrinkles got deeper, and his tumor spread, Colin’s behavior became more youthful than ever. He began falling asleep in his chair before sundown, immediately after we ate. He stopped watching horror and action films and instead chose cartoons and musicals. As he approached death, his soul grew younger with a grin still glued to his face.
December 2016, Colin couldn’t leave his leather chair for Christmas dinner. He tried standing from the recliner but became lightheaded and broke into a sweat. “You hungry, Col?” my dad asked as he walked into the living room. Colin shook his head softly, keeping his stare on the TV screen, playing a Disney Jr. movie. “We could bring a plate of food in here for you if you are hungry, Col,” he repeated. He raised the back of his hand and gently placed it to Colin’s forehead. Colin’s gaze did not break from the movie. My dad’s eyebrows rose, and he turned back to the rest of the family watching from the kitchen. “He’s cold,” he whispered to my mother, as if I could not hear them. A muffled giggle at the TV came from Colin; we all exhaled.
March 30th 2017, my mother flew down to her parents’ house. Looking at her father and then around the dim, dispirited living room, she dialed her husband. “Hey, Erik,” she whispered, unaware she was on speaker phone for me and my brother to hear. She reported to us that Colin wasn’t eating, nor could he go upstairs. Hospice had installed a hospital bed in the living room for him to sleep in, eat in, and live in for the time being. We heard my mom nervously enter the living room to find my grandfather and Colin watching Wheel of Fortune. The static of the call didn’t keep us from overhearing Mom’s conversation with my uncle. I couldn’t hear the joy in his voice as I used to. It’s probably just the cell service.
“Hi Colin! I heard you weren’t feeling so good, honey?” my mother cooed, stroking his back.
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
My grandfather interrupted, “Darling, he was throwing up before and hasn’t eaten all day. Right, Col? And you’re still not hungry?”
I pictured Colin’s eyes flickering from game show host Pat Sajak to Grandpa, back to Pat, and then to my mom. “Not hungry.”
My mother’s eyes glazed over. “What do you feel, Col?”
“My, my stomach hurts. And hot,” pointing to this head and fanning himself. “Hot. And tired. Really tired.”
She put the phone back up to her ear and I heard the clapping of her shoes walking onto the kitchen tile. “I think you should tell the kids that if they want to see him one last time, they should fly down tomorrow.”
April 1st 2017, 6:34 a.m., I sat on a poorly cushioned airplane seat next to a sixty-year-old man who was mumbling in his sleep. I watched the minutes turn on my watch, counting how many seconds it took for me to take a breath, wondering how many breaths Colin had left, and if I would catch his last. I don’t know if it made it easier for him that he didn’t understand death. He didn’t understand why he was sick, or with what. What did he do? He would ask. Why? He would question. What’s in me? What’s killing me? I can only assume he wanted to know. That was the most painful part to watch: Colin becoming consumed with pain and fear, without understanding any of it.
As a child, my greatest fear was death. I had nightmares of all the ways in which I could die, and I would wake up frozen with terror. When the morning came, I would approach my parents with an endless list of questions. Why are we here? Where do we go? Are you scared too, Mommy? The more I read about death and afterlife, the less scared I was to die. But as I had the time and ability to become familiar with the idea, Colin was in a state of absolute confusion, even as he became closer and closer to the end. My mother had told me the night before she talked to Colin about heaven. She told him there were people waiting for him there. She told me that he was smiling.
I stood on the airport platform and watched as my mother pulled up to the curb. I made out what looked like a smile on her face. She leaned over and unhinged the passenger side door. I grasped the handle, comforted by its warm, worn rubber. My mother broke out into a violent cry. “He just died. I just got off the phone. He just died. He’s dead. My brother’s dead.” She choked on her tears.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for making you leave him and get me.” My mother reached and took my hand from my lap, intertwining our fingers and exchanging body heat. We rode to silence but the music of our cries.
April 1st 2017, 10:27 a.m., I said nothing but walked towards the bed where he lay. The shades were still closed, but the TV was off for the first time in years. My mouth gaped, and I felt his absence in the air I breathed. I kneeled down next to his soulless body. This was not Colin. Colin was joy. Colin was generosity. Colin was light. The room lacked his laughter. Grabbing his hand—cold now—I whispered to him my love.