Dick, Are You in There Somewhere?
While growing old, I have lost both of my parents,
I am now called an orphan.
What do you call someone who now faces
The reality of meeting with a brother
Who is no longer in touch with the world?
What do you call me,
As someone who has found
Too little (and too late)
When visiting his brother, Dick?
What do you call someone who is asking:
Dick, Are you in there somewhere?
I sit at the breakfast table with Dick
We are visiting him at his Cape Cod home
We eat our cereal and orange juice
Like he and I did countless times
At breakfast tables in Illinois and California
Many years ago and many miles from
Dick’s home in Massachusetts.
Dick asks his wife where Billy Is
She gently tells Dick that I am
Right here sitting across the table
Drinking the juice and
Eating cereal like he and I did
Many times, when growing up.
But Dick isn’t convinced.
He wants to know where Billy is.
Dick wants to see the Billy that
He knew and grew up with
In Illinois and California.
Not the Bill that is here, right now
I’m sitting across the table from Dick
Feeling sad that I, as the Aging brother
Is not acknowledged
And I, the hurting brother,
Wonders if Dick is in there
Somewhere.
I later sit on the couch opposite Dick, watching him
As his wife places headphones and an iPad
Over his ears while Dick is lying on the couch.
He lies there with his eyes closed,
As if he were dead,
Yet, beating to the IPad’s music with his fingers
Thumping the tunes on his chest.
Dick was always very talented as a rhythmic thumper
He played bongos for a college performance
Written by Terry Gillium before Terry’s
Monty Python, Fisher King and Rhythmic Rise to Fame.
Yet here the performance by Dick was only for me
I’m sitting across from Dick on the couch,
Watching him thump on his chest.
Is his chest now hollow? Can I thump on it,
Like the Tin Man did in the Wizard of Oz
Is there no longer a heart in Dick’s
Once warm-hearted chest?
Dick, are you in there somewhere?
I leave Dick’s home with my wife driving the car,
Since I am a bit too old to be handling
The long drive back to our Maine home,
Where I will be eating more cereal
And drinking more orange juice,
Still wondering,
Is Dick in there somewhere?
Dick and I hold many memories That we can no longer share
Of Family Trips to National Parks
And a long train ride to glamorous California
From our less glamorous small-town home in Illinois,
We were riding on the Atcheson, Topeka And Santa Fe.
Singing Judy Garland songs, teasing our sister,
Being served a meal at the Grand Canyon
By real Harvey Girls, about whom I later write.
I have written many books that involve both memories
And Old school Research and Scholarship
These are books that Dick will never read,
I have memories that I will never share with Dick.
I am sad that this sharing with never occur.
He and I are no longer scholarly grad students
In Oregon, both trying to become psychologists.
And I wonder if Dick is in there somewhere.
I prepare short emails every six weeks or so
In which I share memories of these past events
In the life of the past that Dick and I lived.
Dick’s wife, Eileen, reads these emails to Dick.
He apparently likes to hear these stories
Of times that have long passed by both Dick and me.
I wonder how he takes in and absorbs
These Written memories.
With which Billy/Bill does he associate
The content of these email recollections?
Is there someone inside Dick who can remember
And feel as I do in preparing
These memorable statements.
Dick, are you in there somewhere?
I embrace feelings about warm times
Spent with Dick at our graduate school home,
Studying to become competent psychologists
At our tenement home in Eugene
A distant location from childhood Illinois and adolescent California.
These Eugene feelings are mixed with griddle cakes we
Savored on Sunday at the nearby Pancake House.
These are also feelings mixed with Halloween Parties
We hosted each Fall,
Complete with Apples being dunked, a Roaring Fire,
And Monstrous Masks.
Now Dick seems to be wearing his own Monstrous Mask.
I have strong feelings about this mask.
His mind and heart seem now to be impenetrable.
I wonder if Dick is in there somewhere
Hidden behind the Mask.
