Flipping Grief

After my younger brother died, I began to get calls from people who wanted to buy my parents’ house. As I write this, Conor has been dead for over three years. Nobody outside of family much asks about him anymore. My mother speaks to Conor on her hikes. My father talks to him early, when he putters in the garden, and last thing before bed, lauds and complines, morning and evening prayers. I lack that open line. Sometimes I nod internally to Conor’s soprano laugh; other times, in the shower, an unbidden fuuuuck escapes my front teeth. On a jog between magnolia trees leafless and blooming, I say suddenly to my wife: I mourn his lost possibility. Or I say: The present is against grief. It sides cruelly with what is.

The prospecting calls came four or five times a week at first. Was I the owner of the property on 1262 Braeburn Drive, and did I want to sell? The person on the other end, a real person, was a wholesaler or someone hired by a wholesaler. They might have known that my brother died. Closer to his death, one of them acknowledged it. It was a card in the mail: American flag stamp on the envelope, stationery paper, signed by hand. This must be a hard time. Apologies for writing this way. Sorry if you are not the current owner of the deceased’s estate. But if you are and want to sell the house, could you call . . . ? He gave me his number. I kept it among the few bereavement cards from colleagues and friends. After eleven months, I threw it out.

Conor died on January 4, 2020. A few days before, he’d sat for an interview on a video podcast, A Time Shared, to explain to Charbel Milan his success in building a roofing company. On the show, Charbel, a twentysomething immigrant from Lebanon, interviews emerging Atlanta entrepreneurs from the hustle economy. I watch it again. Conor is himself, handsome, smiling. He’s clad in a Sir Roof T-shirt and baseball cap, advertising his company. He sports a slight beard and breaks often into laughter, proud and at ease. He’s in his apartment, which he’s only lived in for a few months. It’s a swanky high-rise in Buckhead: glossy kitchen cabinets, quartz kitchen island, and a tiny balcony for showing visitors the rectangular blue pool small below. His Christmas tree stands before a wall of windows. He coughs a few times. He tells Charbel that losing everything when strung out taught him not to fear failure.

Two weeks after this podcast dropped, my father and I socked the tree in a giant plastic bag, carried it down the hall, and, foot-propping open the heavy door to the trash room, maneuvered the bag inside, then leaned it against the wall. My father asked again why none of Conor’s friends had stayed with him that night. Why had he himself not gone down to help Conor hang pictures, as they’d discussed? We went back, and I swept up the needles.

I watch another interview on . A young wholesaler, Jordan “Agent”