Through a Glass, Darkly

I am a late comer to social media and its many incarnations. Like at least some other users, I avoid revealing much about my personal life, jealously guarding my privacy. Apparently I am in the minority and astonished every day to see how much others are willing to make public. Why, I ask, does anyone believe the world cares if they were shopping at Walmart, on a beach in Florida, or having a third shooter with some stranger who will surely not be as handsome tomorrow as they were today?

It is a generational thing, I suppose.

That said, this week I am grateful for the technology. It has allowed me new insight into my brother Lee who lies prone on a bed in a cardiac intensive care unit, behind glass, beneath innumerable tubes, and surrounded by scores of monitors, tenuous lifelines created by another technology.

At 63, Lee is still the baby of the family, the fourth of four, the only boy. As products of a military upbringing with its peripatetic lifestyle, we had no roots to any place and so in our adult lives, my siblings and I wandered far and settled long distances from one another. It was not uncommon to go months without speaking, though the ties of family persisted, albeit largely through graduations, weddings, births of sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren, anniversaries, and deaths.

Most of what I know about my brother as an adult I learned through infrequent phone calls and occasional visits. An independent soul and a confirmed entrepreneur he worked long hours at various pursuits and suffered its ups and downs. He called most often during the downs to talk about finances, the market, business plans—an understanding he credited me with from a long corporate career.

Few of these conversations or encounters though allowed me to really know him.

As he fights for his life in the hospital, I trolled his and his devoted wife’s Facebook pages, seeing through those lenses a bit of my brother.

Today, the pages are filled with prayer chains, dozens upon dozens of people, hundreds in some cases, liking, loving, and otherwise emojiing every update.

But I see too, photographs of Australian Shepherds Lee and his wife bred, litters, puppy siblings playing and being adopted by new human parents.

I see groups of friends hoisting frothy beers and salt-rimmed margaritas from places across Atlanta I have never been, and from another of Lee’s favorite spots, Key West.

I see my brother dressed in a variety of what can only be described as “parrot head” wear, a yellow paper lei over a fluorescent green shirt, a black hat with a skull and cross-bones, a tee shirt with a rainbow of psychedelic colors, an outlandish red jacket adorned with snowmen.

I see my brother celebrating being left-handed. I had almost forgotten.

I see my brother with his son flying a drone they acquired for Christmas, my brother signing a petition to keep one of Charles Manson’s accomplices in prison, my brother clowning as he perches atop a kiddy ride, my brother on one of his boats, aboard his brother in law’s airplane, in traffic, and at the IHOP.

Most of all there are photos with his beloved wife and best friend Debbie, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and engaging in the Facebook “love your spouse” challenge for all the world to see and share.

One comment on a post reads, “people are always laughing in your pictures” and I realize how true that is, especially my brother who appears to be having the time of his life.

May there be many more to come.

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“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)