For Ian
All of us take our siblings for granted.
This is not a character flaw or a bad habit. It is a sad quirk of the mind.
If some thing is around long enough, we begin to ignore it. A cat is part of the landscape. A nightstand is scenery. A Nintendo controller is an immovable object, like a root.
Family, too, can blend into your natural environment. More so, actually. I have seen trees without leaves, but I have never known the world without Ian.
Legend says I taught my younger brother to read. That seems unlikely if you think of “teaching” as what happens in a classroom. But I can imagine a world where I was so thrilled to crack the code of books that I couldn’t help but read, out loud, as often as possible. Excitement like that would attract any toddler.
My excitement is an important contrast here because Ian didn’t seem very excitable. He was quiet and cautious. A thinker. A puzzler. A listener. Probably this was because he fell out of one too many swing sets. There are family legends about that too.
He was not generally excited, but he could get specifically excited. His thoughtful mind often led him down obsessions that became his whole world. Games, mostly.
The year I turned 14, we bought Donkey Kong Country for our Super Nintendo. Ian woke me up at 6 am each day to play it, despite the fact that we were on spring break. (That’s the only thing I remember him voluntarily waking up early for. Ian was many things, but he was never a morning person.)
These obsessions made Ian much, much better at games than most people.
For example:
Every Christmas, our immediate family plays a card game called “Knuts.” Every Christmas, I teamed up with my dad, Kate teamed up with my mom, and Ian played alone. Despite having half the number of hands, he always beat us.
All Brisons hate losing, but I think Ian hated it the most. He got too used to winning.
He won at Tecmo Bowl. He won at Super Major League Baseball. He won at Super Smash Bros (every version). He won at Mario Party. He won at Haunted House on the Hill, Resident Evil the Card Game, Skulls, Risk, Halo, and all the rest.
It’s not like Ian had an aggressive, competitive nature. Once you got past the surface — the silent smile, the whirring mind, the thoughtful smirks, the “fun facts” he’d drop into conversation — you would find a man who cared, deeply and fiercely, about those closest to him.
One illustration of this:
Back in 2017, we lost Kate’s older sister, Emily. Sarcoma. The battle went on 4 years longer than expected. During the final weeks, Kate and Kate’s mother and I rotated in-home hospice duty. And we waited. Visitors came and went, bringing meals and comfort. I don’t remember Ian being around much during that time.
Later, when Emily was gone, we held her memorial service at a family home in the woods. I looked up and saw Ian’s face, standing out clearly against the background of trees. My assumption was that he came out of obligation. I thought he did it because it was something family does.
But after the service, Ian stomped across the field, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into the tightest hug I had ever been given. I crumpled in his arms.
In the middle of the forest, suffocated with the horror of losing Kate’s sister, I dug my fingers into my brother’s back and sobbed.
And he was an oak, strong and sturdy, with every single one of his leaves.
(For those unaware, my brother is still alive. I sometimes write eulogies for the living to make them feel as scarce and rare as they are.)
