The loss of my older brother Loren has been very difficult for me. Most mornings my first thoughts are of how I can’t believe he is gone. My thoughts move through the stages of grief, from the denial that he is gone to anger that I can no longer talk to him, then to wishing I had stayed more connected or that I had gone to see him more often, to regretting not making the effort to travel to Korea or Egypt or Spain when he lived in those places. I find myself ruminating about how I let petty resentments shape our exchanges or ignore his attempts at contact. As these thoughts whirl around my brain, I realize that the stage of grief that eludes me is acceptance. The idea of being at peace with his absence seems very far off if not impossible to imagine.
Near the end and for some time before that, our phone conversations would concentrate on long term memories—often of our childhood together in Berkeley. Our age difference is nearly five years so we were not close but also we were very different personality types. While I was outside playing with friends, riding my bike or skateboarding, Loren was happiest reviewing his Latin cards or reading the Encyclopedia or the Dictionary. Loren’s brilliance at learning languages was evident at an early age. On a vacation in Mexico at the age of twelve he quickly became our interpreter, ordering meals and translating our needs into Spanish. Loren seemed to possess the ability to hear a word and know its meaning. Later, French people would say to me that Loren was the only speaker they knew that they had thought was a native when he spoke. He had an incredible ear.
Of course, books were very important from an early age. For birthday gifts, Loren would often pass on to me what he was reading. I remember receiving The Communist Manifesto followed by Reform or Revolution or The Essence of Christianity. The History of Surrealism, The Theater and its Double and Homage to Catalonia would follow. Then Memoirs of a Revolutionary, the 1844 Manuscripts, and the Trotsky trilogy along with Society of the Spectacle, Why I am a Marxist, and The Making of the English Working Class thrown in, as well as an IWW songbook and a Kenneth Rexroth autobiography.
While I was often too young or disinclined to make the effort to fully understand these readings, in my twenties I was taken under my brother’s wing and mentored more fully by him in the philosophical, economic, and political lessons of Karl Marx. We would spend hours in his favorite espresso cafe while he taught me about the historic specificity of consciousness or how the growth of the productive forces comes into conflict with the social relations of production. I can clearly see him with his hand gestures and his nursed cup of coffee taking the time to mentor his little brother. I’m so grateful to have those memories and I will never forget those moments for as long as I live.
Grief appears on its own time and I’ll be talking to Sharon or hear a certain song and I will burst into tears. One thing that has been very helpful during these past weeks has been hearing from the people who have shared their experiences with Loren. Their stories about his humor, his brilliance, and his vast knowledge have been extremely healing for me to hear. Thank you all for being a part of his life.