Illustration by Drew Shannon
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I inherit a thousand records when my brother dies. The albums aren’t left to me per se, rather simply left behind in his garage, a den made cozy in the winter by an overhead propane heater, wallpapered in Kokanee beer cartons and corniced by snapback hats. Industrial shelves held an entertainment centre: an old PC wired to a 1980s-era television where he claimed he watched blockbusters using a foreign IP address; nearby was a turntable on a carpeted shelf above a decaled mini fridge. Two substantial speakers sat sentry on rows of hundreds of albums – his collection beginning as a teen in the 1970s, when albums were coveted and came with liner notes and lyrics, where every song was listened to.
My brother died after the death of his wife. She was the love-of-his-life and when multiple sclerosis took her independence, they agonized over the move to long-term care. Then he was laid off. Lovingly, for the next decade, she became his world. Slowly, unchecked and unnurtured, his own world deteriorated. Their home, even the garage-den, disintegrated into disrepair, neglected as his own health. Still, he’d phone me in his usual jokey-way, “It’s your older and much better-looking brother calling.”
With his death, his two grown sons made fast work disposing of their childhood home. What remained were the albums. Neither son wanted them and they agreed their dad would want them to go to someone who did.
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My own record collection was sold in a garage sale decades ago. Gone were Grace Jones, UB40, Boz Scaggs’s Silk Degrees. When my parents died, I kept their handful of albums as mementos –Kristofferson and Cash, Jones and Belafonte.
My brother’s den-garage is stripped bare when my nephews pack my car with boxes holding the albums. They tell me the spines are facing up so I can easily read the artists. “Be careful when you lift one – the record might slip from its cover.” This advice reminds me so much of my brother’s voice.
I hug both my nephews and we talk for a bit. I drive home impressed with the industriousness of the boys in the aftershock of losing their dad, and really, both parents so close together. I am also awed at the speed in which my brother’s life of overwhelm could be disposed. I unload the boxes onto pallets in my garage and slit one open to count 75 albums. I know Sade and Willie Nelson, but who is Ray Griff? Some mental math: there’s a thousand records. How am I ever going to do this justice?
My brother would have a fair bit of advice on what to do with all his records. It feels impossible that I will never speak to him again. His voice was like late-night radio, as calm and articulate as he was funny. His death has hit me harder than I imagined, it’s like a piece of me stripped away and gone forever.
“But you weren’t close,” a friend points out.
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It’s true, my brother and I were very different. We raised our children differently, lived in different circles, had differing values. But I discover quickly that losing a sibling means losing a person who was with you from the beginning, present in your most innocent and foundational years. Who sat across from you for so many family dinners. Every time we had spaghetti, my brother pulled a strand straight from his throat, waiting for the exact moment we had eye contact. “Eew!” but I never failed to look. Just as I never failed to be impressed with his feats, like the time he was ticketed for speeding on his 10-speed bike, or making wine in his closet from a can of orange-juice concentrate. As adults we loved to reminisce about our childhood, especially times at our grandparents in small-town Alberta. As many recollections as I had, he had more. Losing him meant losing all his memories, too.
I look through old family albums and am reminded how much he was loved, and in that, how much I was loved, too, and I need to know this. It helps me accept that his later life was his (un)doing, his nature versus our nurture. When his birthday comes around, I take my family out for ribs, my brother’s favourite, and we share Uncle Glyn stories, retell his horse-walked-into-a-bar jokes, remember how he loved becoming a grandpa. As much as my brother and I were different, we’re the same, too. What we find funny, how we can talk to anyone, how we made our mom’s tomato soup exactly the same way.
We also procrastinate, so I’m determined to unbox those LPs, play them, share them with my kids and friends. I don’t know what surprises I’ll find, but I’ll listen and envision him in the Golden Days of the den-garage, leaning back in an office chair no doubt with a broken spring, sipping something smoky, his music etching the night. I doubt I’ll move my car out and an old recliner in to listen the way he did, but you never know.
Donna Elaine Williams lives in Calgary.