James Braly - One Last Family Photo

 

 

I am [scoffs] sitting on a little wooden visitor's stool in room 202 of the Houston Memorial Hospice, holding my sister Kathy's hand, telling her how much I love her. She is on her back in a bed in a nightgown and compared to the hospital were just at, not much more. Just an oxygen mask and an IV connected to a drug pump that every 10 minutes injects her with Dilaudid, a painkiller; so powerful and potentially deadly the hospital wouldn't give it to her. Evidently, Dilaudid is what you get when there's no reason to be afraid of dying anymore, when dying is what you're supposed to do. And so, unlike the hospital, which was full of beeps and monitors and people trying to keep Kathy alive, the hospice is very still and quiet. The only sounds are the hiss from the oxygen and every 10 minutes from the drug pump, followed by if Kathy happens to be awake as she is now looking out there through far away Dilaudid eyes, when she turns to me and lifts up her oxygen mask and says, "Do you love me enough to trade places?"

 

Now, I love Kathy more than anyone I've ever known, apart from my little boys, Oliver and Owen, and my wife Susan, on good days. [audience chuckle] So, I start crying as I look at Kathy, thinking, "Are you nuts? Yeah, I'm your brother, but come on." But I'm ashamed to tell that to Kathy. So, I say, "Well, would you want to be married to Susan? [audience laughter] A teetotalling Dr. Jekyll to Kathy's party animal, Mr. Hyde? And would you want to raise Oliver and Owen with her, who Susan continues to breastfeed over my objections at six and four years, turning me into Mr. Hyde every time I see It." Kathy says, "When you put it like that, [audience chuckle] I don't think so." [audience chuckle] And she starts laughing until she falls asleep, having chosen death over life in my marriage. audience laughter] Which I totally understand because I feel that way too a lot of times. But the main thing is everything's under control.

 

When we first checked Kathy into the hospital-- into the hospice, I had a private meeting with the counselor and I told her, "I'm going to need your help. My family does not know how to function as a family. We haven't been in the same room in 40 years, since my parents were divorced when I was a little boy. Nobody gets along. Everybody suspects each other of some kind of conspiracy, usually of stealing their money frequently, which is true. [audience chuckle] They hate Kathy's boyfriend, Steve. Steve hates them. I want Kathy's last days filled with peace and love." And the director said, "That's a very nice thought, it's a very noble thought. But in my experience, people usually die the way they lived. [audience chuckle] So, maybe it's not your job to make things right," which I thought was a very good piece of advice, except that my job leading my life, dealing with my marriage, is infinitely more complicated and painful than trying to lead my family, all of whom have descended on Houston Hospice to be with Kathy.

 

My dad, a decorated bomber pilot who has transferred his ferociousness from North Korea to ice cream [audience laughter] and now is so massive his knees can't support his body. [audience chuckle] My bird-like mom and the new face she gave herself for her 75th birthday. [audience chuckle] Her gigantic muumuu wearing, otherwise identical twin sister [audience chuckle] with her old face. [audience chuckle] Together looking like this before and after advertisement [audience laughter] for plastic surgery and liposuction. My big sister Corinne, who runs a makeup business called Facade. [audience laughter] Without irony. [audience chuckle] My older brother Terrell, who the last time I saw him was subscribing to Mafia magazine [audience chuckle] without irony. And me, the gray-haired baby brother and a family emissary to Kathy's boyfriend Steve, who the men call Long Hair, the women call the moron, [audience laughter] who suddenly walks into the room as I'm sitting there on the stool passed me over to Kathy's bed, grabbing her by the shoulders, shaking her awake and says, "Wake up, wake up Rabbit Girl. I got the license. We're going to be married." Kathy opens her eyes and says, "When?" He says, "Tonight at 10," and they hug and she falls back asleep and he turns to me and says, "Just so there won't be any misunderstanding." Meaning he'll be Kathy's legal next of kin, giving him legal control of family heirlooms in their apartment, China and silver, which my sister Corinne thinks are hers and legal control of Kathy's body, which my mom thinks is hers.

 

Then he says, "If Corinne wants to have me arrested, which she does, [audience chuckle] it's going to be about a lot more than silver. If she doesn't leave me alone, I will kill her. I will step on her head, mate." He's Australian. [audience laughter] I am over it. And he walks back out the room, leaving me feeling once again that things are out of control. So, when Kathy wakes up, I say, "Are you sure you want to marry this guy? I'm not here to judge. I just want you to make sure you know what's going on." Kathy says, "They may have me on a lot of drugs, but I know what I'm doing. I'm not done partying yet." I say, "Okay, who's invited?" Steve has the medical power of attorney, so he's used that to quarantine everybody else in my family down the hall in a family room. Kathy says, "I want everybody there. Tell Daddy I want him to give me away." Which he has never done at either of her previous weddings or been to any family wedding, because as he told me when I invited him to my wedding with Susan, "If your mother's going to be there, I think I'll pass." [audience laughter] I say, "Okay." She says, "I can't look at you, Hunt." My middle name. Kathy's nickname for me. It makes me laugh. I say, "Why?" "Because there are grapes around your head" And she falls back asleep.

 

So, I get up and go down to the family room and tell my mom, dad, aunt, brother and sister they're getting married. My dad says, "Can't be. She's unconscious, son." "Evidently not dad." "Tonight at 10 o'clock, she wants you to give her away." "How did Long Hair get a marriage license?" "The preacher." The fundamentalist minister who's been coming around trying to get Kathy's deathbed conversion every night. "That son of a [beep]." [audience chuckle] My brother Terrell says, "Maybe he's trying to adopt a baby, dad. So that he could legally inherit Kathy's share of the family trust, which cannot go to a boyfriend or a childless husband." My dad says, "I didn't think of that, son." And I'm proud that his offspring has uncovered a conspiracy that he himself had overlooked. [audience laughter] 

 

My aunt says, "What adoption agency would let a baby go to a drug addict dying of cancer and a moron? [audience chuckle] I think it's going to be hilarious when the creature finds out he's not inheriting a thing." My mom, her twin sister, says, "He's too stupid to figure that out." My sister says, "I don't care if you're a hideous moron. You can't help it if you're born stupid and ugly. What matters is what's inside." She's the president of Facade. [audience laughter] And what's inside, I assure you, is pure evil. [audience chuckle] I say finally, "Whatever we may think of Steve, and I'm not crazy about the guy, I think he's marrying Kathy because he loves her and he wants control. Her ashes mean more to him than they do to us." My dad says, "He doesn't love her any more than my cat, son. It's all about the money. Now you put your antenna out just a little bit further and see what you pick up. [audience chuckle] Now, how are you and Susan getting along?" [audience chuckle] "Fine, dad, we're getting along fine."

 

And I get up and go outside to the garden. The hospice is in a converted Tudor mansion that used to belong to an oil baron, and I sit down on the stone bench next to a meditation fountain under an apple tree and call home. Susan answers and says, "How are you feeling?" I say, "Fine. I'm doing fine," because I can't tell Susan how I'm feeling because that will bring me closer to the marriage, closer to each other, and I don't want to be closer to the marriage. I want to think about Kathy's marriage, somebody else's intractable personal problem filled life, which is about to end. And so, when I finish telling Susan about the chaos, I am completely numb, like I'm on drugs. [audience chuckle]

 

That night, after changing into the dark suit I had reluctantly packed in New York, thinking I might have to wear it once, I walk into Kathy's room with the rest of my family for the wedding. Kathy is in the corner, asleep as usual. So, we sit around and wait for Steve and the preacher to arrive and Steve's mom Betty, and her lover, MJ. [audience chuckle] Mary Jane, who have flown here for the wedding and who in my mom's book worse than being lesbians, are late. [audience laughter] "Where are Betty and her rodent?" [audience chuckle] she says. My sister Corinne says, "Maybe the black flapping vultures flew home." My dad wheels over and says, "Let me tell you something about Long Hair. His mother's—he/she is a he wearing a wig." I say, "I don't know, dad.” “She is a little mannish, but she is not a woman, son. Maybe she's a hermaphrodite. At the least she's a major oddball."

 

I get up and walk over next to Kathy to get away from him, but he wheels over and continues, "Your day and your garage have something important in common. They both need to be filled." My dad frequently speaks in aphorisms sometimes which have no apparent connection to observable phenomena. [audience chuckle] "And it doesn't matter how big you build your garage. You can build a 10-car garage and one day you'll come home in your 11th car with no place to put it. It's just how it is." I get up and walk away from him and try to feel just what I feel for Kathy. Until Steve and the preacher walk in the room, followed by Betty and MJ. The preacher wakes Kathy up. Corinne does Kathy's makeup as only the president of Facade can. She looks beautiful, finally framing her face to look like a Madonna in a burgundy shawl embroidered with gold around the edges and then giving her a wedding bouquet. My dad stands up. The nurse walks in to make sure Kathy's not being coerced. Steve walks over to the corner and takes Kathy's hand, and the preacher opens the Bible and begins. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony," like an auctioneer, because he needs to finish before Kathy falls back asleep. Kathy says, "I do." My dad looks at Steve and they shake hands. My mom says congratulations and gives him one of her bony osteoporosis hugs.

 

I pop open the champagne and pour it in the paper cups from the water cooler. Everybody drinks a toast to the bride and groom when someone says, "How about a picture of the kids?" So, I walk over to the corner and stand one side of Kathy's bed and my brother and sister stand on the other and we pose for a photograph, looking at a giant poster of the same pose taken 20 years ago at my sister Corinne's wedding. The only photograph of the four of us together ever taken. Corinne had it enlarged and put on Kathy's wall to remind her of home. So, I stand there staring at it, at how we used to look, posing for the last photograph we'll ever take. My mom and dad looking on. All of us together in a room for the first time I can ever remember, and probably the last because of Kathy, who in the end is showing us all how hard it is but how beautiful it can be to let go. Thank you.