– ANY substance cannot be taken two days concurrently. I will keep it to twice per week, at least to start. – NONE will be taken during my work (except under certain conditions). – None before noon or after 9:00 p.m. – None at the MET…don’t change that experience. – Remember, high or not high, there is a time and/or place for everything. It’s not an all or nothing thing. * REMINDER: I know I will look back on this writing with nostalgia and longing and ache. For once, I should enjoy myself while I’m still here. I begin this story in a funeral home because I once read a Philip Roth novel that begins over a grave. Roth writes of a clenched pack of modern, white-collar American Jews shuffling their feet and talking about a man who died unfinished, and if I had to boil my brother’s service down to a sentence, or an image, or just a feeling, that wouldn’t be a bad way to describe it. I cannot set my story at a grave, overlooking a body, like Roth did. My brother was put into a temporary plywood box and covered in a blanket, and soon after the service he would be cremated and poured into a plastic bag.
