Requiem for your Toes

Lately it feels as if I've only just begun to grieve his loss. It's amazing how long it takes to really get it that he's gone. Denial is such a precious gift sometimes. I don't pretend to know how it works. Perhaps some unconvinceable part of my brain holds onto the idea that he's going to come back, that it's impossible that he's gone, that this can't be. While I've absorbed the common knowledge that we live and we die, that none of us is going to be around forever, that our days are numbered, there is this surprise I did not expect. Two years later, it hurts worse. Two years later, I still think "This can't be."
It is. Two years ago yesterday, Daniel Glen Mills, my little brother, died of pancreatic cancer. Two years ago tomorrow, I flew into Salt Lake City, where my sister-in-law picked me up at the airport, then we drove from store to store buying stacks of newspapers (containing his obit). Later that afternoon, we went to the funeral home, where we bathed him and dressed him in his burial clothes (he was Mormon and they get dressed up in white). I remember his toes, white and cold and beloved.
So, I know he's dead. I saw his body. I touched his body. He wasn't there anymore.
When he was there, he was amazing. Everyone he ever loved knew themselves to be loved. He had a way of surprising you with his sense of humor. And he laughed along as if he'd surprised himself. He made me laugh every time I saw him. He made strangers laugh. He had a straight face and a fiendish delight in life. He was a Mormon, but he was not what most would expect from a Mormon.
When he first converted, I was living with Diane, my partner at that time. He wrote me a letter saying he wanted me to know that his converting to Mormonism didn't change any of his feelings about me or Diane, despite his new church's stance on homosexuality. We were, and always would be, family. He said he didn't believe that god left anyone out of his love and he refused to let the church's narrowness limit his heart. He and Al continued to visit us and to make us part of their family.
Daniel had a heart I strive towards: big, inclusive, tender, fiercely loyal, stubborn. He knew more about love as a verb than anyone I've known so far. He screwed up as much as the rest of us. He left his wife for another woman when their youngest was six months old. And he came back. When he was 20, he went to prison in South Carolina for two years for having sex with a 13-year-old. Right before then, he married and fathered a daughter who was then taken away from him. He could be a self-righteous asshole. He liked to argue. He liked to be right. He was a terrible driver.
He'd been sick for four years before he was diagnosed. He'd gone to urgent care over and over with excruciating back and stomach pain. They didn't find anything. Right before they discovered the cancer, a doctor told him he wasn't going to get anymore pain medication from him because he thought Daniel was working him. He was diagnosed the week after he graduated from college with his degree in systems design. He was already enrolled in a master's program. He was 37 years old.
I already knew that life is not fair.
I just had no idea how much I would miss him. And for how long.