I will always have a brother.

My brother Curt, whom I always referred to as "The Pip," would have been 37 today, and even though he's been gone for more than three years now, that doesn't make me an only child. I will never be an only child because I grew up with the best sibling I could have ever asked for!

When I wanted him to, Pip would hold my feet. That was something I used to enjoy as a child: I'd lie on the couch, and rather than prop my feet on an ottoman or a coffee table, I'd have my younger brother hold my feet and elevate them to my liking. Pip was capable of elevating my feet to the perfect height. As a six- or seven-year-old, he was easy to persuade, but he became more reluctant to fulfill this desire as we grew into adulthood. Still, I can remember being in my twenties and requesting that he hold my feet, and to Pip's credit, he did it! (He refused once we reached our thirties, but I do not hold this against him.)

As kids living at Lake Heritage, some friends and I used to host what was known as the Kids' Olympics. We organized bike races and running races, swimming races and three-legged races... Stuff like that. We also made prizes (construction-paper ribbons, mostly) that were awarded to the winners. In the middle of the day, there was a sort of halftime show. Pip performed. He came outside in a bathrobe, with "dirt" (eye shadow and mascara, I believe) smeared on his cheeks, and proceeded to sing this ridiculous song in our front yard. I think the song was something that originally aired on Nickelodeon, but I'm not positive about that. All I know is that the chorus went like this:

Washing my face!

Getting it clean!

Cleaner than it's ever been!

Pip was a funny, funny child. He liked to perform, though I don't recall him being involved in theatre all that much. He played in the pit for the high school musical each year (I have his cello in my studio!) and was in a band (The Trendsettaz took first place at Battle of the Bands three years in a row; can you say "trifecta"?), but he wasn't usually a get-up-on-stage-and-perform kind of guy. UNLESS that performance occurred in my parents' bedroom.

Do any of you remember West Coast Video? It was a video and video game rental place, existing even before Blockbuster, I believe. My family went there a lot because Pip was a video-game addict. Generally, he rented a game and I watched him play it. Sometimes, if the game was appealing to me (Bubble Bobble, Battletoads, and Marble Madness being examples of things that piqued my interest), I might participate, but I generally just talked to him while he attempted to destroy each level. There was this one game called ToeJam and Earl. I have no idea which console it was for or what the point of the game even was. One of the characters was a skinny guy (ToeJam, I think?) and one was really obese (probably Earl). I thought the name of the game was funny and so while Pip was trying to beat the game, I wrote a script about ToeJam and Earl. I then created a paper-bag mask that had ToeJam's face on one side and Earl's on another. I think Earl was the backside because when I later put Pip in costume, I remember shoving a pillow under his shirt to make it look as though his back was actually a giant belly. Essentially, the play involved him standing in our parents' bedroom and spinning in circles, reciting ToeJam and Earl's lines while my mom and I watched and laughed.

Shortly after Pip passed away, my mom attended some sort of neighborhood thing that she didn't really want to go to. I think of this often and I wasn't even there. Anyway, at this neighborhood thing, a neighbor who didn't really know my mom asked if she had kids... and she answered, "Yes." The person then asked, "How many?" And this was a hard question for my mom because she was down to one kid, kind of. But not really. My mom will always have two kids. And so she eventually answered, "Two," and the friend she was there with, who was standing beside her, said something like, "That's right." And I just think of that sooooo frequently, because it gets tricky once a sibling or child passes away. It's a weird thing to talk about.

Right after Pip's death, I felt almost bad about bringing up my brother with my students because oftentimes they'll want to know more about him. Where does he work? What's our age difference? The girls generally like to know if he's cute. So I stopped talking about him for a while. Now, however, I don't hesitate to bring him up. If I have a Pip story, I share it, and sometimes I just preface it with, "When my brother was alive..."

I did this the other day. I don't even remember what I was telling my students, but I remember I was saying it in first period and I started it with, "When my brother was alive..." and the story was a good one, you know? It was happy. But after I shared it, one of my kids turned around (we'll call her Western State, because I know my students enjoy receiving nicknames in my blogs) and said, "Ms. Meeson. Are you okay?" And I was like, "Yeah. I'm fine. Why?" Truly, I was baffled by this response. And then Western State said, "Because you just told us your brother died." It was so sweet. It's students like Western State who make teaching worth it. I adore that kid; she's kind to her core.

Anyway... I just wanted to remember Pip in writing today. So I did.

I think about him a hundred times every day, and I wish he was still here to help me remember all of our childhood experiences, but in a way, he is still here. Because I will always have a brother. He will always be a part of me and he will always be alive in my memories and the memories of his friends. And the world is better off having had him in it... if only for a short time.