Awe

Rolf is my younger brother, born a year after me in a small clinic in Jalisco, Mexico. The “cocktail” was the combination of end-of-life opiates he took, which usually ends a human life in an hour or two.

I called Kim, who summarized.

It was a bright morning with a blue sky. Rolf and Lucy [their fourteen-year-old daughter] sat outside and had a long talk in the sun. Rolf came in and said he was ready. He took it at three p.m. He wandered around the kitchen. Checked the fridge. Rambled. I told him it was time to lie down. . . . So we lay down in his bed. After a while he fell asleep. He’s snoring. Here, listen . . .

Kim put the phone up to Rolf’s mouth. I heard the deep, rhythmic vibration of his vocal cords—his death rattle.

My parents are here. Your dad and Nancy are on their way. Can you bring your mom?

We’ll get there as soon as we can, I replied. Thank you, Kim.

I picked up my wife, Mollie, and our daughters, Natalie and Serafina, in Berkeley, then my mom in Sacramento. We arrived at Rolf and Kim’s home in the foothills of the Sierras at ten p.m.

Rolf was lying in a bed downstairs, which he had retreated to in his last weeks. He lay on his stomach and right cheek, his head tilted slightly upward. My dad held his foot. I leaned in near his midsection. My mom was at the head of the bed, stroking his thin hair.

Rolf’s face was full and flushed. The sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks caused by colon cancer were gone; the tightened, sagging skin around his mouth smoothed. His lips curled upward at the corners.

I rested my right hand on his left shoulder, a rounded protrusion of bone. I held it the way I would the smooth granite stones we used to find near the rivers we swam in as young brothers.

Rolf . . . This is Dach . . .

You are the best brother in the world.

My daughter Natalie laid her hand lightly on his shoulder blades:

We love you, Rolf.

The cycle of his breathing slowed. He was listening. Aware.

Listening to Rolf’s breath, I sensed the vast expanse of fifty-five years of our brotherhood. Roaming Laurel Canyon in the late ’60s, spying on rock-and-roll neighbors and skateboarding through Volkswagen-lined streets. In our adolescence, walking the wild foothills of the Sierras, and playing Little League on the Penryn A’s, me pitching, Rolf, a long-haired lefty, on first, a mischievous light in his eyes saying Man, this is fun! As young adults, on wild trips to Mexico, dancing in clubs, wandering in the high Sierras. And then in graduate school, buying wedding suits and being each other’s best man, becoming teachers and fathers to daughters.

I sensed a light radiating from Rolf’s face. It pulsated in concentric circles, spreading outward, touching us as we leaned in with slightly bowed heads. The chatter in my mind, clasping words about the stages of colon cancer, new treatments, lymph nodes, and survival rates, faded. I could sense a force around his body pulling him away. And questions in my mind.

What is Rolf thinking?

What is he feeling?

What does it mean for him to die?

A voice in my mind said:

I feel awe.

My feeling in that overwhelming moment shared some essence with experiences of awe from my past, both big (for example, seeing Nelson Mandela speak after his twenty-seven years of captivity with fifty thousand other people) and small (seeing the dusk light on an oak tree, listening to my young daughters’ duets of laughter). Watching Rolf pass, I felt small. Quiet. Humble. Pure. The boundaries that separated me from the outside world faded. I felt surrounded by something vast and warm. My mind was open, curious, aware, wondering.

A couple of weeks after Rolf’s passing, Kim brought together friends and family to tell our stories of Rolf. We talked about his fascination with clowns and magic tricks, and how he loved to cook for crowds of friends and enthrall neighborhood kids with his over-the-top Halloween costumes. From his coworkers came stories of how he calmed the most difficult boys at a little mountain school where they taught. And then the stories tapered off and we fell into a silence. A church bell rang, stirring a spiral of blackbirds out of the trees, rising into a sky heavy with dark gray clouds. We shook hands and hugged and then walked quietly out of Rolf and Kim’s home to return to our lives, mine with a Rolf-sized hole in it.