Angels at the window

Loss

Song of Childhood 
By PeteHandke

When the child was a child 
It walked with its arms swinging, 
wanted the brook to be a river, 
the river to be a torrent, 
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child, 
it didn’t know that it was a child, 
everything was soulful, 

and all souls were one….. 

i was 36 when the telephone rang at 5 am telling me that my brother Clifford had been found dead at his house. It was the day after St Patrick’s day. Clifford had unknowingly mixed a cocktail of alcohol, cocaine and his asthma medication - I don’t think he was trying to kill himself rather he was greedily trying to live as though he didn’t suffer from almost debilitating asthma…he wanted so badly to be normal.

I was living in San Francisco and I remember the room I was sleeping in, the man I was sleeping with and the sound of the telephone ringing.  I remember the stupor that led to uncontrollable tears, the phone call to the airlines, the flight booking, and the sense of hopelessness. I remember that I was working for the San Francisco Film Festival - the screening that evening as of Wim Wenders stunning film Wings of Desire. The film became a kind of marker - a memento mori a dream in which I fabricated some acceptable understanding of Clifford’s departure from this world.

When I see that film I think of Clifford, his beautiful eyes, his difficult disposition, I think of that morning, that film, that flight and the shock of seeing my parents so shattered .

…I cannot remember the sound of his voice anymore