Christopher McGovern 4/13/54-12/13/95 A LETTER TO MY BROTHER Hey Chris... You’ve been gone thirty years. I wonder what you’ve been up to. Memories get fuzzy after all this time. But here’s what I do remember about you: Favorite candy: 1) Butterfingers & Marshmallow Peeps. You hid a pile of them in your underwear drawer. Favorite cookie: Toll house chocolate chip. Favorite hamburger: White Castle. Favorite song: “Build me Up Buttercup. Favorite sports teams: Yankees and the Jets. Favorite TV shows: 1)Honeymooners: You could recite every line from every episode, verbatim. 2)Melrose Place: The last episode you watched aired only a couple of days before you passed away. You were so disappointed that they didn’t show previews for the following week, even though we knew you would not be alive to watch it. Quirky things: You always wore two different colored tube socks. You buttered the outside of the roll. You loved Cold Duck champagne and scalloped potatoes. When you were young, you thought your first name was Chris and your middle name was Topher. As an adult, sometimes, you wore your pants a bit too high-waisted. Random memories: When I was ten and you were sixteen, some kid stole one of my shoes. You chased him down and got it back for me. Regret: I still wonder if being the only boy with three sisters made you feel left out at times. Sometimes, out of nowhere, an image pops into my head of you returning from chasing that kid down, your face all red and sweaty, holding one shoe in your hand. These random images and memories pop into my head and that quick I feel your presence. What I remember most about you was how you made others feel important and loved. In the days leading up to your death, you had this way of making others feel less anxious, the way we so often feel here on earth. I am now sixty-five. I was only thirty-five when you left. I wonder if you would even recognize me now if you passed me on the street. I am certain I would recognize you. You are stalled in my memory as a beefy guy with a full head of reddish blondish brown hair and a full beard, forever frozen in my memory as a forty-one year-old man. If I were being honest, I do feel robbed that I never got to see you as a fifty-year-old man with a receding hairline. Or a sixty-year-old man with white hair and a deeply lined face. Or a stooped over seventy-year-old man with a faulty memory, and yet, probably still wearing that wide grin, reciting lines from the Honeymooners. Sometimes I stop and wonder: Why am I here and you are gone? Where have you been? What do you do all day long? Are you waiting for us to join you? Is that how it works? I hope so. Thirty years is a very long time here on earth, but I wonder if it only seems like a month to you. I guess I’ll find out the answers to these questions one day. Until then, just know that I haven’t forgotten you, and that I miss you so much, and I look forward to seeing you again someday. Love, Your favorite sister (ha ha), Carolyn