Brothers and Sisters,
Newly curating the Rollins Family Album Collection, Eat a Peach, of all things, pops up first, pristine as the day it was pressed 40 years ago, ringing loud and true today as ever. John and I easily attribute its purchase to Mark, in that way that he was always contributing to the Family music…
You’re my Blue Sky
You’re my Sunny Day
Lord ya know it makes me High
When you turn your Love my way
Turn your Love my way
Yeh, yeh
For a quarter century, Mark and I were each other’s Blue Sky: I the dreamer, he the realizer. Where one’s thought ends and the next’s begins, the who and which of everything between us nearly inextricable, just as my living memories of him are now. Summer, Music, Sports, Politics, Trips, Ethical Questions. All is positive. All is possible. Tolerance of Differences. They say we repeat our earliest relationships throughout the rest of our lives. Exactly how my marriage works, Lisa is my Blue Sky Now. Thanks to growing up with Mark. I’m probably the luckiest person alive because of Him.
Life in the month since has been full of joys and wonder, hope and near-tears, and the beauty of people, all because of Mark. Awesome people with awesome stories. Shout outs to Billy, Dierdre, Marcy, Tony, Sarah, Paula, Lynn, Vivian, Serena, Betty Ann, Oberon, Jeff(!), Bob and Janet, Ann-Marie, Arjun(!), Ann B.(!), Kathy Maher(!) and I’m hearing, EJ and Andy--telling of so much life lived. Calling out for more about his Chicago years, the college and NYC years, the California years, and his travels. Everybody has their own best remembered facet of his fascinating personality. If all of you whose lives Mark touched to contribute a moment of your thought and time to this memoir for him, How rich that would be! Spotlighting what mental illness ruins. It affects all our lives. Best Words from the Best People.
In Marley’s words: So much things to say right now/Dey got so much things to say/ When the rain fall/It falls on one and all. Forthcoming in this space, I promise mountains of happy memories, of life’s greatest moments and joys, but where to start. Somberly, first thoughts about his end:
April 2, 2016. As beautiful a day as Spring gets. Chatham. Driving back into the city to drop my brother off at the psych ward. The last, apparently, we his Family ever saw him. 15 months held that thought in. Did he enjoy the Cubs?
Saturday July 1, 2017. Leaving day of our D.C. vacation, wondering where it will take us. Rising with the sun for a bike ride, Lisa says call Dad. Dad:“Mark’s gone.” “What next?” she asks. “Going for my ride.” Biking the Capital broadways once again as Deep, Meaningful, Close to Home and Heart as it gets for me. Place of my Independence. Place I sheltered my brother once when he was lost. Don’t want to ever let go of this moment, for when it passes, things will never be the same.
That afternoon, John, Mary Beth and I are all up in Jersey from D.C. the night before (the coincidence!) to break the news to Paul. Brothers and Sisters Stronger Together. Knowing Mark’s recent years, Shocking but not surprising. It wasn’t him, this is all about the mental illness. Bipolar. We know he took it to the mat to the very last. Man of all the best that both Harvard and Stanford had to offer. What more can be said about the damage caused and the dead seriousness of this scourge. That is our purpose in this space. Please contribute.
Daddy’s flown ‘cross the ocean
Leaving just memory
A snapshot in the family album
Daddy what else did you leave for me.
Daddy! What’d you leave behind for me?
All in all, ya’ know we’re all just bricks in The Wall.
Deep of the night, under the stereo’s glow, head between the speakers on the floor, Pink Floyd can be spine-tingly chilling, and rock-out loud, to the same tune even (Another Brick in The Wall, Parts 1 & 3), and, in the dark, a glaring spotlight on stark reality:
I don’t need no arms around me,
‘n I don’t know drugs to calm me
I have seen the writing on The Wall
Don’t think I need anything at all
Oh
Don’t think I need anything at all!
All in all, ya’ know we’re all just bricks in The Wall.
Peter - this is so beautiful. Perfectly captures the balance: the joy of the memories, the love of family and friends, the inspiration of the music, the scourge of the disease. All were part of Mark, and though I wish the last fact were not, it is. So now we are obligated to keep telling the stories, feeling, creating and re-creating the love and advocating on his behalf.
And on Pink Floyd -- there is much musical attribution that goes on in our family ("who brought that album home?"). I attribute Pink Floyd equally to you and Mark. It was in Mark's room that I laid on the floor between the beds with huge headphones on my tiny head listening to "Dark Side of the Moon" (I couldn't have been more than six). But then I attribute "The Wall" to you. And therein is the beauty of our crazy family. We learned from each other. One would start a fad, bring home an album, the next would pick it up, alter it, pass it on. Organic. A big old family stew. And no argument here that Mark was at the heart of so much of it. The inspiration for so much of it. You told me not long ago that Mom and Dad got Mark a stereo for his 8th grade graduation ('75), but that they got it at your direction. That's the first stereo on which we all listened to Dark Side of the Moon. You pushed the stereo, Mark played the album, we all were the beneficiaries forever more.
Mark got way back into Pink Floyd in the last few years of his life. Back to the starting point. There's some reassurance in that.
Love you, love him. Thanks for all you've both given me.