My Brother’s Eulogy Delivered

Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012

Dear Dee,

My brother continues to fade away and I strongly suspect that he’ll be gone within days. He is bedridden now and not eating at all. I think I told you that I sent my nephew some words to read for me as you did at Joe’s memorial. But it occurred to me that Dennis is still able to hear them. So I called him on Friday and read them to him. I wasn’t able to get through it without breaking down, but I finally made it and he seemed appreciative. This turn of events has kicked up a whole new batch of guilt on my part for putting myself in a place where I am unable to be where I should be—at my brother’s side. It has also stirred up no small amount of anger at the BOP for refusing me the transfer that would have put me closer to my family so that I could have spent some time with him over the past few months. They give lip service to the idea of family being a key part in the rehabilitative process but when it comes down to reality, it’s all just self-aggrandizing puffery.

Church today had to be performed with headphones on and the radio tuned to static to mask the roar of the crowd at the sports TV. How I ache for the sound of no sound!

The sermon was from January of 2010 by Rev. Thomas Disrud of the First Unitarian Church of Portland titled “Speaking the Language of the Soul.” Rev. Disrud talks about the difference between the soul and the spirit, the soul being that part of us that speaks to matters of life. He quotes Jung: “The soul is the archetype of life, embedded in the details of ordinary everyday experience. In the spirit, we try to transcend our humanity; in the soul, we try to enter our humanity fully and realize it completely.

I will close with this “prison fun fact.”

From time to time, one inmate will emit a high-pitched “whoop, whoop, whoop” sound. This is then picked up by others in the unit until it sounds like a pack of coyotes in a feeding frenzy. We don’t hear it as much now that our former “unit counselor” (who we called “the Whistling Idiot) is gone. But it is a signal that he or someone in authority was approaching and to “get your shit together.” One day, I was reading a David Baldacci novel when I saw a reference to the “whoop, whoop, whoop” as it is practiced in the ghetto and on the mean streets. It is done when a police car enters “the hood” and it is picked up by others and passed on as a warning that it’s time to get your drugs and your “ho’s” off the street.

All for now. Hope to hear from you soon.

Love, Steve