Monday, February 16, 2004

LIFE OF BRIAN 8: Everything falls into place [This is the last text installment of the life of my brother. Tomorrow I'll post a photo assortment unencumbered by verbiage, and on Wednesday, his birthday, I'll post photos of Brian here and now--cake and all.] In my old VW Westfalia, Brian and I traveled around the West a little during the '90s. We camped at Death Valley and around Mono and Mammoth lakes. We explored Nevada and Utah, a little New Mexico. We lived briefly in an off-grid cabin on a mountain near Quincy, in the Sierra Nevada. Brian attended an excellent local program in town and I was introduced to the wild medicinal plants in the woods there. Prior to this I'd cultivated a large herb garden in Chico; now I discovered another kind of garden. Our mother moved to Phoenix and Brian and I returned to Chico for a year to sell her property for her. I began doing very well freelance editing computer- and video-game strategy guides on a PowerBook I'd bought with a tax refund in 1995. The work flow never let up. We spent two years in Bisbee, Arizona, where I studied at herbalist Michael Moore's Southwest School of Botanical Medicine. Growing up in hospitals and group homes, and unable to communicate symptoms verbally, Brian had been kept on a steady diet of prophylactic antibiotics. He came to us with a host of problems--digestive, fungal, and immune. Mystery fevers, flus, pneumonias, even hepatitis--there was no disease organism that didn't find my brother an ideal host. After he'd had several brushes with death, I pulled him back from constant involvement with established medicine and studied alternatives, always an interest of mine. Brian's been sick only once now in the last 17 years, and that flu (1998) was quickly intercepted and turned around with herbal intervention. I cared for Gram in our Bisbee home during the months before she died at age 87, and the following year at Mom's request I rented a small house nearby for her to live in. When I finished the herbal intensive I began looking for a permanent place to settle. I knew I didn't want to be a practitioner, but I did want to grow herbs. The steady, excellent editing income enabled us to find and buy this run-down but magical little farm. With the help of my older son, my brother and I and our two dogs and one elderly cat moved here in January 1999. My mother wouldn't accompany us. She was angry to the last. We went back to Bisbee that July to be near while cancer consumed her at Copper Queen Hospital. I put her things in order after she passed, saw to the cremation, and brought her ashes home with us. I won't detail our emotional and financial travails since then. They've been my own fault, largely, but getting past them probably has been necessary to see the road ahead more clearly. Brian's been with me every minute and his devotion buoys me. Musically, he's discovered crooners and divas, and worships the voice of Whitney Houston. He has a little keyboard of his own, and a veritable library of Star Trek episodes and Star Wars films on VHS. The main rule around here is no vegging, and he always finds something to keep himself busy. Once a day in good weather he puts on his running shoes and dashes the half-mile length of our driveway and back two or three times. When I'm working at my desk, he's working at his. I'm looking for software he might be able to use if I gave him one of my old computers. He comes out and works alongside me when I do stuff around the place. We're making great gardens. We're teaching each other about spirit and love. (He has far less to learn than I.) And we're no longer persons things happen to. Together, now, we make everything happen. 11:06:54 AM    say something if you feel like it []

© Copyright 2004 Sam Mills. Last update: 2/18/04; 8:14:32 AM.