
It might seem strange, but it started with a death. The death of the father precipitated the decision. The death was not unexpected but the outcomes were. Dean would sit in the hospital room with his leg next to his father’s dangling bag of piss. The tubes with fluids going in and out. The nurse periodically coming to vacuum the solid bits of phlegm to keep the ventilator clear. His father was in a hospital of no particular reputation in a sunny part of Los Angeles. IT was the wrong sort of hospital. The sort you come to die in rather than miraculously emerge from. Dean would sit in the room with the beeps and gurgling sounds. The family was there too. Not always at the same time. They had come from around the country. Stopping their lives momentarily, the last time they would visit this town they had visited many times.
That might have put some force behind the decision as well. All the expectations. They came to see the dying father, but they were also seeing the drifting little brother, the one separated by decades, wars, music, geography, just about every way siblings can be separated. And here they were with their long-ago grown up lives, as messed up as they were, they were somehow more complete, their major blunders behind them and forgiven. Dean was still in the middle of messing up his life while trying to start it over.
