Such beautiful boys.

One of my favourite childhood photos:

This is my brother Kevin and me playing together and making faces in the mirror.  It has never failed to make me smile and I only wish I could remember the actual moment it was taken.  

Here is another fave:

This was taken after a Sea Festival parade in White Rock, BC (my hometown), when I was around three (?).  I was in ballet, so I assume I was in the parade with my ballet school and that explains the tutu.  ...although, I now know that a three-year old needs no excuse to wear a tutu.  Kevin is holding my hand, and the brooding-looking guy leaning against the car behind us is my eldest brother Keith.  I just really love the way Kevin is holding my hand; so proud to be with his little sister.  

Keith was born January 18th, 1967.  Kevin was born December 17, 1967.  Yes.  Eleven months apart, almost to the day.  I believe this is what is known as "Irish twins".  When they were little, people assumed they were twins and they even had some twin tendencies.  For example, Kevin did all the talking for Keith, except he called him "Keithy", which with his little kid lisp, came out "Keesy".  My Mom loves telling the story of the woman who assumed she had three boys (this was before my brother Philip was born in 1971): Keith, Kevin and Kasey.  I also adore that story and it's no surprise that Kasey is one of my all-time favourite names.  I always wish that I could have known them when they were little boys, because they were just so beautiful and it would have given me so much more insight into who they really were.  

Here's a photo of four generations: my Great-Grandfather, my Grandfather, my Mom and Keith.  The photo is dated August 1967, but I think that was the date it was printed, not the date it was taken, since baby Keith only looks four-to-six months old at the most.  But regardless, my Mom was already expecting Kevin.  Crazy:

And here is a young Keith and Kevin with our Great-Grandparents:

Adorable little guys, right?

Kids grow up.  Although they were tight as boys, my brothers Keith and Kevin couldn't have been more different.  I remember epic fights between them as teenagers.  I was only a kid (Keith was 7 1/2 years older than me) and I recall being seriously afraid at how they would fight, especially if my Mom wasn't home.  It was intense.  

But I loved my big brothers so much and I loved them because they were so different.  I mean, snooping in their rooms was incredible, because they had such contradictory interests; I learned more about music, comics, sex, art, and pop culture in my brother's bedrooms (and I include Philip in this statement) then I ever did from any of my friends.  And I knew that Kevin was gay long before he came out to my family, because I had been snooping into his life for years.  It was funny: he came out and everyone seemed so surprised, but I kept thinking, "are you guys blind?"

What I definitely did not see coming was when my Mom told me that Kevin was sick.  I had heard about HIV and AIDS, but I never thought it could ever touch my family, let alone leave a gaping hole.  But it did, and after a very short time, too short, Kevin passed away on May 31st 1993 at the alarmingly young age of 25.

I remember turning 25 and realizing that I was about to live longer than my brother.  How was this fair?  I still don't know.

This is a photo of Kevin at about 23 or 24 years old.  I think he knew his time was coming and he made sure to have a really nice photo of himself to leave behind.  I couldn't be more thankful for it:

                                          

Kevin was amazing: incredible sense of humor, big laugh, fantastic taste in music, courage, beauty, generosity, love.  He was my Mom's best friend.  He was the whole package and he has been missed every single day since he left us.  

Keith and I were always close, ever since I grew up a bit.  He was patient with me, he cared about what I had to say, he related to my teenage angst and he was the only one whom I allowed to laugh at said angst, because I knew he wasn't laughing at me.  He was my touchstone and I like to think I was his, but I'm not sure.  He took me to do cool things, like going down into Washington state to catch the first ever Lollapalooza festival.  I was 16 and it blew the doors off of anything I'd ever experienced in the realm of live music.  He was also a late-night DJ at CITR, a radio station at UBC in Vancouver.  He would tape his radio shows for me and I would play the cassettes over and over again, as much for the sound of his voice as for the music.  Keith was sarcastic, hilarious, snide, sensitive to a fault, stupidly beautiful.  He had it all and didn't know what to do with it.  We had long, heartfelt conversations about growing up and he confided in me all his childhood anxieties and burdens.  To say that I loved him is almost insultingly insufficient.  

I hadn't spoken with Keith for quite a few months and one day I came home from work to have Peter tell me that Keith had died of a heroin overdose the day before, on June 25th 1998.  I hadn't even known the drug was a part of his life, but apparently he had been fighting with it on and off for some time.  After telling me, Peter tried to hold me up, but ended up letting me sink to the floor and I still have the image in my mind of looking at our small apartment from this angle, the wood floor stretching out in front of me.  Life does go on, it has to go on, but moments never leave you.

Here's a photo of Keith from what I assume was a Halloween party.  I love it because he just has the best sneer on his face.  If Keith's voice was amazing, then his snarl was enviable:

There was a massive difference between the deaths of my two eldest brothers: I got to say goodbye to Kevin; I got to tell him that I loved him, even though he already knew it. I never got that chance with Keith and I never will, although I find myself talking to him in my head sometimes, perhaps because we have so many unfinished conversations. 

I can never underestimate my brothers' influence on the lives of my brother Philip and myself; it's impossible to measure. We were honed and shaped by watching them and snooping in their rooms and getting to spend what little time with them that we had. Both Philip and I have kids of our own now and the only one of those kids that knew Keith and Kevin is my nephew Keith, who was born in 1991. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish my brothers were still around and that my kids would know them.

But the thoughts that run most often through my mind have more to do with my Mom. I look at the photos of Keith and Kevin as little boys and I imagine that for my Mom, it was only yesterday that they were running around underfoot, driving her crazy, filling her heart. It was only yesterday that they were holding their little sister's hand, or making faces in front of the mirror while my Mom took a picture. They were such beautiful boys, Mom. Thank you.