A Litte More Glitter

The Story

I'm the youngest of seven children and the only one who was planned. Why? Because my brother Paul was the oops baby, and my mother couldn't figure out how to raise just one child at a time. Basically, my entire existence is predicated on the fact that I only exist because he existed and we were raised in tandem, like every other set of Irish twins, but he really was the golden child who lit the way for virtually every experience I had, from the moment I was able to form memories.

The thing is, aside from the normal annoyance of having a little sister, he really did try to make sure that the path behind him was cleared and easier for me to navigate, taking the heat on every terrible adventure we dreamed up as kids, to having a seventh grade friend of his dance with me during my first middle school event so they think you're cool, to offering to ship and sell a pound of weed to help me put A deposit on an apartment in New York.

I never said his attempts were always good. He understood that my existence as Paul's sister meant something, and that he had a job to do. And then the horrible call came on, November 8, 1997 informing me that he died of a heroin overdose, the eighth person in the Wyoming Valley. I cursed him for leaving me to deal with the one thing he never prepared me for. How does Paul's sister exist without Paul?

I was tasked with the ins and outs of funeral planning by my parents, picking out caskets and selecting appropriately somber Bible verses for readings one and two were not my things to do before 20 bingo card. But I think my mother thought that focusing on the ceremony would be a helpful distraction. Honestly, maybe it was. I was too busy focusing on the absurdity of it all to allow my devastation to kick in. But at the time, I had never felt so alone. The following is a small excerpt from a piece a much younger me wrote in 2002 after the lines died down and a group of old men I'd never met knelt and set a rosary, we were free to go home.

At 10pm The house was filled with people and revelry all around as they were joking, laughing and sharing baked goods. To this day, I think my brother was the lucky one. He only overdosed on heroin. At least that was over quickly. Here I was overdosing on family, and this was three days and counting. Frankly, I was irritated at him for getting off so easily. I was waging a battle against the forces of my bloodline, and the one person that I'd always had at my side to help me deal with them was gone. Lucky bastard.

My family surrounded me, regaling me with their stories of addiction, because knowing your husband emptied a bottle of Jack last Christmas helps me how as I saw my father in the kitchen trying to get rid of a guest, no one had noticed. The old man weeping into his highball glass. Kept toasting my father and my family as we all looked at him from every angle to determine whether he was animal, vegetable or relative, we determined he was none of the above and simply spotted a gathering at the house of one of the guys from the bar and decided to join in as a crowd smelled about me.

The phone rang. It was my best friend from high school who couldn't make it in for the services. As I reveled in the sound of a familiar voice, not asking me for anything. I fell into a comfort zone that was quickly ripped apart by the strains of my mother's voice. What are you doing on the phone? Can't you see we have company. We're entertaining with that. She shoved a plate of deli meat at me and headed off to make sure the pots were perking and there were enough napkins by the halosky.

I explained to my very confused friend that I had to stop my weeping to go entertain, hung up, grab the platter, and headed into the living room, smiling maniacally. I held out the platter to some neighbors, or was it an aunt on the French provincial couch in the sitting room, saying, Would you like some meat? Silence, I mean, you must want some meat. My mother gave me this platter and said, we're entertaining. The last thing I want is to be rude, so meet again. Silence, I got off my phone with the best friend to bring it to you, so you really must want it right here. Have some meat with that. I plopped the platter and the coffee table before them and headed back to the kitchen to prepare my eighth cup of coffee for the day, desperately praying that a bottle of Baileys would appear beside the pot to save me No such luck.

At the time of Paul's death, my emotional state was almost entirely managed by my older brother Chris, the next closest to me in age with a decade between us and with whom I shared a small one bedroom in the heart of midtown Manhattan. In that apartment, he played Auntie Mame decking the halls way before it was needed, and finding small ways to bring the smile back to a face I swore was broken. Most of his efforts were successful, though he definitely missed the mark when he brought me the Princess Diana tribute album, nothing like popping in your Walkman and starting your long walk to work with the strains of Brian Mays, who wants to live forever. Well, no one's perfect. Maybe it was our shared queerness, the fact that he was the family's baby for a decade before Paul appeared and ruined it, the fact that the two of us shared a whopping 400 square feet, or are shared and wildly inappropriate sense of humor, but something happened in the time after Paul's death that created a bond that neither of us would have expected.

Even long after I'd moved out every year for Paul's birthday and the anniversary of his death, I'd get a call or voicemail in the busier years of happy, dead brother. Day to you, yeah, long after I moved out, the calls would come and we continued to age as Paul never did, though, Chris's health started showing signs of decline, he was so desperately trying to hide. When I'd call his roommate would say, Mary, he's not going to die tomorrow, but...

This went on for 24 years, until the pandemic. He shouldn't go out. We said he had a compromised immune system. We said, just stay at home until, well, we didn't know. A terminal extrovert, Chris couldn't last without people, and within a week of the lockdown start, he began doing store runs for people in his Washington Heights apartment building. Within four weeks, he'd been diagnosed with COVID. Somehow he stayed out of the hospital, but the exhaustion that came with the illness never really left, and his body, exhausted from over 20 years of treating HIV, had enough. I got a Facebook message to call his roommate ASAP.

I knew when I called the number and heard in the background,"It's his sister." Then a mumbled speak with Officer Rodriguez that confirmed it at that moment. After releasing from my soul a sound so primal that my wife feared our neighbors would call for help, adult me was faced with a list of tasks that teenage me didn't have to worry about. Call the rest of the siblings to break the news, make a plan to go to New York to clean out the apartment, figure out how to navigate the phone maze of the New York City Medical Examiner's Office. Move forward with cremation, and figure out how on earth I would arrange a service in a city in which I didn't live.

With my brother Paul's death, I held out hope that they made a mistake until the slow unzipping of the body bag was complete seeing him there before me, a face without wrinkles and a head without a strand of gray. It became very real with Christopher, it was a call, then a series of calls made, mostly by my wife, to arrange internment. COVID prevented any visits to see the body. Since no identification was needed the last time I saw my brother was a few months before the start of the pandemic, when I was lucky enough to get an Uber gig for somebody headed into the city. And our next physical encounter was approximately five business days after his death, when my now brother in a box was delivered by FedEx from the crematorium. Surely he would appreciate the absurdity. When Paul died, there was a persistent feeling that no one on earth could possibly understand what I was experiencing.

With Chris, I was given a reminder after reminder of how incredibly lucky I am to have a collection of the most wonderful people on Earth in my life. My wife Katarina handled almost every call that required any amount of emotional effort, and my brother's dear friends, Michael, Bo and Ben, were utterly invaluable in helping us clear out his apartment, performing a level of physical and emotional heavy lifting that I could never repay.Michael also secured the space and a room full of breathtaking talent to create a service that would send Chris off in style from the heart of the West Village. All that was left, really were the smaller logistics. Who would handle the food? Who's paying for talent? How are we going to fit everyone in with the distance restrictions in the city?

Chris died on April 9, 2021, and the service was June 12. In two months, countless calls, texts and updates were sent between my sisters, Maggie Steph and I. On the day of the service, I was consumed with nothing but the minutia. Where are the flowers going? Where will people park? They open up space for 10 more people. Who should we allow in? Does everyone have a place to sit? Do the performers know how grateful we are? Is the live stream working? Someone said there was a sound issue. Who can fix it? We're already seated. Can I get up to fix the camera? Can I get through this eulogy without ugly crying? Everyone found a place. The necessary family members all fit into the building alongside Chris' family of choice, built over three decades in the city. The sound never was fixed for the live stream and the recording, but after the first two minutes, I stopped caring. I think it was one last reminder from Chris that sometimes things have to be experienced in the moment and only once.

When the service was over, my sister's order of enough food to feed a small nation appeared more than expected and more than needed, even for the standing room only crowd that the last minute lifting of restrictions allowed a dear friend ran to the right aid to get foil in bags so we could give it away to anyone interested. There is a Pulse nightclub vigil going on across the way in Stonewall Park. Friends and family brought plates over for the attendees and the organizers. Even then, the sandwiches were multiplying like Loaves and Fishes, and I found myself offering a free lunch to everyone passing by. And you know, at 19, I thought my mother was so heartless in making me hang up the phone after the week. Why was she so focused on entertaining when our world was collapsing? But I get it now, sometimes there's absolutely no sense to be made of this world, but the one thing you can control is making sure that everyone who's hungry gets their meat.

Tonyehn

Mary, thank you so much for sharing your story. I would imagine that it's pretty hard to tell given the fact that you lost two siblings, I couldn't help but think about the fact that you said the only reason you exist is because Paul exists, and now that you have lost both these siblings, I'm just wondering how you feel you continue to exist.

Mary

Storytelling. I think that the only way that any of us continue is in the impression we make on other people. So if I could share this story, then they're here.

Tonyehn

Yeah, I thought it was lovely how you said you were so lucky for this collection of friends. Because honestly, in listening to you, I felt that you were so lucky to have had these two siblings. You had one that was like a guide, and a second that was almost like a partner in crime. And I love that you can celebrate them in a story, do you find ways to continue to celebrate and share them with others besides the storytelling?

Mary

I mean, absolutely, it's, it's with Chris. Every part of who I am is I to make an off color joke I once said it. I'm not saying that my super gay older brother influenced my musical taste, but I did listen to a playlist on Amazon, and they recommended creative KY jelly and and some gold LeMay. So. Well, I think I am as as gay as Christopher can make a human being that has ovaries. And with Paul, it really is. The oddest thing is, with his passing, part of it is okay. I have to exist and be this person that there was no more shadow to hide in. So the large, obnoxious, flamboyant, loud person that people know is, thanks to Paul, I might have been an introvert. That not happened, yeah, to get out there for yourself.

Tonyehn

Obviously there was shock with Paul's death. I feel like there may have been some anger too, and it takes time to get over that anger. Do you feel like you had had time to we can never fully grieve, but grieve as much as possible before you lost Chris?

Mary

Yeah, I think that, I mean, it was, it was almost 25 years so I matured quite a bit in that time and and it became, there's there's the, you know, before Paul and after Paul. So it was like the the existence of childhood, because my brother Paul and I were with with the distance and the age in the siblings, Paul and I were raised in a different home, so it was like I discovered the five older siblings, and they kind of carried me through to process and exist, that this was the foundation, but everything that came after was something that had to be built?

Tonyehn

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up your siblings, because as you were telling a story that connection with you and Paul, I couldn't help but wonder what your relationship is like with your other siblings.

Mary

We're scattered to the wind at this point, my two sisters, Maggie and Stephanie, and I have the constant sisters chat. It's a it's a different style of relationship than what I had with my brothers, but, but they'll loan me money if I ask.

Tonyehn

I guess that's important.

Mary

But it's, we've we've discovered as as adults, the personalities and the quirks within each other that maybe we didn't know. And you know, it's it's funny that my brother Chris, was the one, especially during the pandemic, that had the sisters chat, because I always said that I was born with three brothers and three sisters, and ended up with four sisters, because I have a brother that we haven't talked to in about 30 years, and then my remaining three sisters, but Chris was the one that kept that going, so I'm not as good at it, but through memes and Tiktok videos, and there's a constant communication there, and it's we're as close as possible, 700 miles away.

Tonyehn

Yeah, I also when you were talking about the distractions during Paul's Memorial and your mother creating these distractions for you, I was thinking, I wonder if she appreciated that later. And then you circled back around and said that you did. So then I wonder if the distractions became meaningful when you were planning Chris's Memorial? Do you think you sought them out even though you had plenty of help? Or did you sit back more and let other people handle the distractions? No,

Mary

I focused on the distraction. So again, my wife did anything that required any intellectual effort, any emotional effort, wading through all the paperwork with Social Security and the medical examiner's office and everything I wasn't equipped to do I could. I cared what songs they played. I cared what was on, you know, the altar. And I remember having a panic attack before Chris's Memorial, and I was outside like hyperventilating, and I was like, Shit, I get it now, because I was like, everything has to be perfect. Oh, it's those freaking sandwiches. It's like, oh, maybe she wasn't being a dick. Maybe mom was just like, I don't know what to do. I just somebody needs to just clean the table and polish the silverware.

Tonyehn

And I don't know, yeah, what a great circle, right? Yeah?

Mary

And I was, like, literally standing on Christopher Street, just looking at the sun, like, oh, well played, Ma, well played. She

Tonyehn

got you, yeah? You also, I love the way, how you say everyone found a place at his memorial, and it made me think, what's your place? Now,

Mary

I really should have brought a therapist for this.

Tonyehn

Sorry, it was a psychology.

Mary

There you go, that explains it. But for. Me now. I mean, it's the benefit of being the baby is I still feel like my siblings, still feel like I have the luxury of people caring how I'm doing, and I feel like there may be the thought that, like at any second I could snap, which is not a bad thing, because then it's like, you know, kid gloves, make sure that I'm taking care of I think now, as an adult, because I took on more of the planning with Chris's, I think we're kind of in the same level. But I think that being the baby I'm always gonna have, you know that that group of people that are just like, okay, hold Mary's hand, Pat her on the head, and make sure she doesn't end up in the nervous hospital.

Tonyehn

Yeah, yeah. I really thought that end sounded so like Chris, too. The fact that there was all this food left over and you're handing it out to people, especially because you talked about him going out to shop for the people where he lived. And I don't know why, maybe because he mentioned Mame, but it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.

Mary

That was the line we used in his obituary.

Tonyehn

That is amazing.

Mary

And I actually have an Auntie Mame tattoo for that. But the he was a larger than life. He would have, I mean, he he's coming back on the march bus from New York. He was like, Oh, my friend, you know, Juan and Lupita. We were sitting there. We shared some oranges. I had some some tacos from the stand and I was like, How long have you known these people, since 130 We're going out for drinks later, I'll meet you back at your house. And he that's very much something he would have done. And like, especially with the vigil that's he just goes out and gives things to people for pride in 2020 he filled his entire apartment building with rainbow balloons. Gosh, every up to the it was a fifth floor elevator building the elevator, and every single floor had rainbow balloons. And then he baked, you know, rainbow cookies for everyone is like, well, we can't go celebrate, but here you go.

Tonyehn

Wow. Well, I really appreciate you sharing your siblings with us. I feel like we could all use a little bit of Paul's sense of adventure, is what I got from him, and maybe a little bit more of Chris's glitter.

Mary

We can all use a little more glitter.

Tonyehn

Thank you.

Mary

Thank you.