DUST  –  A Memoir    

by Summer Brenner

 

When the package comes in the mail, I unwrap and immediately start reading, and can’t put it down. Then I write a spontaneous note via e-mail:

 

Dear Summer,

your book arrives this Saturday morning, the driver brings it up to my door – surprise. Thank you so much for this gift!

 

Wonder-ful, what a wondrous memoir. Congratulations for this momentous accomplishment. The tragedy and beauty of your father and brother, and your eccentric mother – and you honoring the legacy.

 

My brother has a grown mentally & emotionally differently-abled son, very difficult journey, and I love him so, have known him since birth and know my brother's struggles. I also know the struggles with hospice first hand :)   so glad you are writing about these things!

 

Thank you for bringing all your writing skill, talent and honesty to this remarkable memoir.

 

This week, I attend the reading of my friend Summer Brenner’s splendid memoir DUST at Books Inc. on Shattuck in Berkeley. She is an accomplished author (see link to her website and her other books at bottom). The house is full. As she takes questions and comments from the appreciative audience, her 6-year-old grandson Beau keeps bringing colorful children’s books to her standing at the mike. His mother tries to pull him aside, but he dances back to the front, pirouetting, falling dramatically to the floor, intent on stealing the show. This is endearing and fitting, I think to myself. Unconsciously he must understand that grandma is publicly talking about family, and why would not HE be the center of it all. Our grandchildren are the future. And Summer’s book is a fabulous way of looking back and making it all timeless for the future. In another decade or so, her grandson will be very grateful for this memoir, full of family, place, history, tragedy, and humor. Meanwhile we all are very lucky to read Summer’s beautiful and moving prose.

 

From the Foreword:

My brother David and I were born to a Jewish family in Atlanta in the 1940s....Since his birth, David lived with mental and physical limitations. I served as his translator, interpreter, ally, and protector until I chose to leave....  In April 1973, I was called home from San Francisco. David refused to leave his apartment. He was having a breakdown. Eventually, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a malady that ended his autonomous selfhood....   Other than brief visits, phone calls, birthday cards, and gifts, I lived apart from David and our mother for thirty years. Then, through a series of events, both calamitous and miraculous, David came to live with me.

Summer and her brother David in 1998 (from book)

 

Two brief excerpts:

 

1

THE GRAVE

When I first arrive, I wander through Plot #30. A man sits nearby. He’s weeding a grave and crying. I feel I should leave him alone. I should abandon my search for David in case it’s too close to the spot he has already claimed for his grief.

But David is not in plot #30. I find him in Plot #29, Space #7 (organized something like Chapter and Verse). He lies on a hill facing southwest, a hill dotted with majestic trees. Around us are the tombs of many. It’s a populous village of notables. I deliberately chose to place my humble brother among them.

I sit on David’s grave.

May the mothers and fathers
who have lived and died
before us bless this spot.

May the children who are
yet to come revere it.

David is in his plein-air closet. Narrow and contained, solid with earth below and infinity above. Across the blue firmament, wisps of fuzzy clouds hurry by. A perfect coverlet.  Less than a month old, the rectangle of grassy turf has nearly healed. It is nearly seamless. From the site, I can see a wedge of bridge and ship rigging.

Before he died, I asked David if he wanted to see the place. Then I quickly apologized, in case he found the suggestion morbid.

David said he was used to everything. I thought he meant that people had always said cruel and careless things to him. But maybe he meant he was untroubled by the prospect of death.

He declined to visit the cemetery and soon grew too sick to walk. However, I was able to show him photos in a brochure because Mountain View is a famous place. It’s an historical landmark (1863) with mausoleums and obelisks, a bird sanctuary, and a beautiful, tranquil park, designed by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

The bareness of the plain grass by David’s grave is a comfort. By choice there is no container for flowers. The next time I bring flowers I’ll simply lay them on the grass so they can wither and blow away.

May the plants
on this hillside provide
beauty for the living.

May the birds who pass
take note of its serenity.

Summer’s mother Rita (from book)

 

24

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

“Something is wrong with your brother.” 

 

It’s Mother. I can barely hear her. Her voice is shaky. She’s hard to understand. 

 

“You have to come here and help.”

Mother says your brother, not David. Like she used to say your father, not Eddie. Your grandmother, your aunt. It’s the way she disconnects from the family. Nonetheless, there’s no doubt that David is having a crisis. He has locked himself in his apartment and won’t come out. 

 

The landlady can’t get him to open the door. Mother can’t get him to open the door. Day and night, he cries out. But he refuses to open the door. He’s disturbing the other tenants. The landlady says she has to evict him. She says if he doesn’t leave, she’ll call the police.

The next day, I fly to Atlanta. From the airport, Mother drives me to Decatur. Decatur is where David lives. He lives in an apartment near the junior college where he takes classes.  

“I’m the only one who believed David would go to college,” Mother says.

It’s true. No one believed except her. She believed so much that she pressured David. He could have had a simple job. He liked tinkering. He could have repaired bikes and lived modestly. Mother wanted to prove something. She was determined to prove that David was smart by her standards – hers and society’s. It’s hard to know if her belief was more about him or herself. 

 

Her friends’ children graduated from prestigious schools. With professional, prestigious careers. David and I are disappointments. There’s little she can say about us. There’s nothing she can brag about. Poetry doesn’t count. My publishing a book doesn’t count. Although she’s a serious painter, she knows that art is rarely valued. And poetry valued least of all.

 

Dust, A Memoir now available: https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/dust.html

 

Please visit www.summerbrenner.com to learn about my other publications. Thrift Books, which is where I always go first, has work both new and used. Barnes and Noble has a good selection. For my noir novel Nearly Nowhere and YA novel Ivy, Homeless in San Francisco, try PM Press. And as a last resort, there's Amazon.