“Remembering my Brother,” column for Aug. 2, 2016

A phone call at 5 a.m. rarely brings good news. I held my breath, afraid to answer. On the last ring, when I saw my sister’s name on the caller ID, I said a prayer and dialed her number. That’s how I learned what I never dreamed possible: My younger brother had died unexpectedly in his sleep.

His name was Denton. I called him “Bubba.” That’s Southern for “brother.” I also called him “Monkey Boy.” That’s Southern for a squirrely kid with a mile-wide grin that lights you up like Christmas and looks, yes, like a monkey. A cute one.

I wish you could’ve known him. Maybe you did. He never met a stranger.

The week before he died, I twisted my ankle and broke two bones in my foot. It prevented me not just from walking but, worse, from flying “home” for his memorial service.

Lest you wonder if somehow Bubba might’ve had a hand in my accident to keep me from telling stories about him at his service, let me assure you he would never do that. I’ve written lots of stories about him. If he wanted to stop me, he’d break my fingers, not my foot.

My mother was 17 when she had my sister. I came along six years later. When I was 4, Joe was born blind, afflicted by cerebral palsy. Denton joined the party when Joe was 2.

Growing up, we were close the way children learn to be, riding a hard, bumpy road, hanging on to each other for dear life.

As we grew older with lives of our own, the closeness faltered but the bond held firm. You don’t have to stay close to remember how it felt, and to hope you will be close again.

His memorial service, hosted by his wife and daughter, was a fitting celebration of a man much loved and a life well lived.    Joe spoke on behalf of our family in a voice that was both shaken by grief and steady with resolve: “He was my brother. We had our differences. But I loved him and he loved me.”

Others spoke, too, family and friends, telling stories that poured like a healing balm on a roomful of broken hearts.

I wish I could’ve been there. I might have added this:  When Denton was little, he liked to wander off _ across the pasture, back in the woods, as far as he could go. My mother would make me go find him.

I spent half my childhood looking for him. Sooner or later, I always found him. Often as not, he’d be curled up asleep under the porch with the dogs.

One day we were taking turns jumping a barbed wire fence. (Back then we didn’t have IPads.) One of us would hold the fence down while the other took a flying leap over it. At one point, for reasons I will never understand, when Denton leaped, I let the fence go.

Minutes later, as my mother rushed him off to get his leg stitched up, I stood sobbing on the porch waiting for the police to come and take me away.

The police never came. And Denton never ratted me out. He came home with 12 stitches, crawled up in my lap and asked me to tell him a story.

In that moment, I saw clearly the size of my brother’s heart. I would see it time and again in years to come: When he married his high school sweetheart, the love of his life; when he bragged about their daughter (which he did every time we spoke); when he came to California to comfort me after my first husband died, and made me laugh by hiding in the bushes growling like a bear to scare our sister half to death.

Sometimes when I flew back to visit, he’d give me a tour of the homes he built. (His crew loved that I called him Monkey Boy.) Or we’d meet for lunch in town and talk and laugh for hours. Each time I saw him, I always hoped for another time.

There are so many stories I could tell you about my brother and the size of his big heart.

I will just say this: If you get to heaven before I do, tell him that when I get there, I’ll be sure to find him.

And the first place I will look is under the porch.

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