While we were battling to work things out with Dignitas, we were vague with his family about what would happen next, and even vaguer about our hopes for what would happen next. One of his brothers said something like, One day at a time, and we mm-hmm’ed. The same brother said that another brother had noticed something was wrong with Brian the last time Brian had come home, in the spring, before the diagnosis. That spring, as Yvonne was emptying out her house to move into an assisted-living apartment, she instructed her five adult children to come get the things she didn’t want. She told Brian that the giant （three-hundred-sixty-pound） stuffed shark he’d caught when he was sixteen was waiting for him, in her basement. He wanted it. Reader, I did not. I wanted him to have what he wanted, most of the time, but not this shark on the short walls of our small house.
I suggested Yale might want the fish （I would have offered it to his elementary school, to our library, to Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale restaurant, up the road. Anywhere but our house）， and after I had made some phone calls and determined that none of the colleges wanted a giant stuffed shark with a few missing teeth, we moved on to the Yale Fishing Club （yes, they exist, and now I love them） and their particular arena, the Yale Outdoor Education Center. Getting the shark meant driving two hundred miles to his mother’s house and back, in a U-Haul rental truck, then driving thirty-five miles on to the Yale Outdoor Etc., unloading the shark, doing the handoff with Mr. Yale Outdoor Etc., and coming home, in one day.
Brian and I worked on this project, him identifying the who and what and me either making the calls or making the on-paper guidance for the calls. （What time do they open? What time do they close? Can someone help you load/unload the shark?） We were like those shambling old couples at the beach—he looks for the shells and she picks them up, clutching each other for balance. It took two weeks, but all was arranged and Brian managed it, calling me hourly and coming home safely, exhausted but calm. The only glitch, apparently, was an angry misunderstanding with one of his brothers. This brother is a stickler for routine and cannot bear to be wrong, so I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t even really take notice of how hard this all was to arrange, how many phone calls to the same people, how many more follow-up calls than usual. We just did it.
I’m glad he got the shark before the diagnosis, before we knew that he shouldn’t be driving. By the end of the summer, when Mr. Yale Outdoor Etc. called Brian a few times asking for the details for the shark’s plaque, for its magnificent display, it was impossible for Brian to keep track of the task or the details. He had forgotten exactly where he caught it and the circumstances, although we have a （large, gold-framed） photo of him at sixteen, long blond hair and tube socks, standing with his father on his one side and the shark on the other.
Later, after we share Brian’s diagnosis, all of his siblings will tell me that they knew something was wrong on the Shark Trip, and I am angry but not surprised that not one of them called me to say, Is Brian okay? I don’t know why it makes me angry. I don’t know if it’s the thought of them seeing and discussing his vulnerability or that they didn’t hasten to share their observations with me and offer support. （Would I want them to? Would I want one of his sisters calling up to say, Hoo boy, Brian is definitely getting absentminded. Who would that help?） I am just angry that they saw him struggle and they got to do that and he is gone and they are here. Mostly, when I am angry, it is only that.
Winter 2019, Stony Creek
The sun sets at 4:28 P.M. and we are still working out a few kinks with Dignitas. （It takes Brian less than five minutes to find a copy of his birth certificate, which astounds and delights us both. We scan it and send it. I scan it and send it.） Dignitas writes back the next day that, although we are on course, they do need the certificate itself. We send it. Two weeks later, I hear from S. that it was not quite the form they need. We contact Kenosha Birth Records and, ten days later, we receive the new certificate. We send the actual certificate to Dignitas. Ten days after that, they email us that this new form is acceptable and we are even more firmly green-lit.
We finally give Yvonne the okay to share the plan with the siblings. I say that we are available for all supportive conversations and for visits. When a sister-in-law strongly suggests that we have a big family dinner in Philly as a way to celebrate Brian and say goodbye, I say no, in four different and emphatic ways, and I know the visits will be coming. And I’m mostly glad. I’m not going to Philadelphia again, Brian says.
His sisters call me, as well as Brian. They are loving and distraught. One will come for a visit in a week, with Yvonne. The other will come with her husband, of whom Brian is very fond. One brother will make yet another trip with Yvonne. His other brother is, I think, supposed to come with a sister-in-law. Brian’s niece has volunteered to keep track of the schedule, and she does her best but, in the end, she calls me and lets me know that, as I anticipated, the coordination of visits kind of broke down and people are doing as they damn well will. I appreciate her more than I can say, this lovely, anxious girl who volunteered to wrangle her aunts and uncles and grandmother into a schedule of coordinated visits to say a final farewell to Brian. I wouldn’t have wanted the job and she has helped more than she hasn’t, having conveyed to her family that Brian’s convenience and comfort are paramount, that Amy is a Rottweiler and will not have it any other way.
In the end, one sister-in-law and one brother-in-law, not married to each other （whom I have never known to be close）， decide to come up together, which surprises all of us, even Brian, and then there is some friction about scheduling, or driving, or avoiding rush hour, and he will not make the trip with her but he is not pleased that she’ll make the trip without him. He will come a week later, with Yvonne. Meanwhile, our sister-in-law does make the trip by herself. She arrives with food and kisses, and I can see Brian is truly happy to see her, with her pretty face and warm hugs and her admiration for him. She could stay for a week, as far as I’m concerned. She is a lively, mile-a-minute presence and we’re glad of it and glad she came, despite the family-wide disapproval of her coming up solo. （I’m not sure why that was. If they were my own family, I could tell you why, even if I chose not to. Brian’s family is still, to me, another country, where I speak the language but not the dialect.） The family phone calls with Brian seem to go well. There are a few lovely letters from friends of Yvonne’s, who’ve known him since he was born. He becomes more detached with every week.
We get several emails from an old friend, imploring and scolding and using, again and again, the least compelling arguments I can imagine （I read on Google…There’s no urgency…）， and each time Brian responds with kindness and restraint.
* * *
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Nothing will happen until January. There’s Christmas and Hanukkah to get through before January 6, when Dignitas reopens. No one is happy about this, except, maybe, in the oddest way: me. I know that this will be our last Christmas, but I know that we will still have some time after that.
I tell my sister that Brian and I won’t be joining her and her husband for the posh Vermont resort New Year’s Eve that we’ve done with them for the last few years. Ellen wants me to come. She says, Maybe it would be a nice distraction. She says, I just want us to go on having what we had. This is loving and heartfelt, but I can feel my own heart harden. That will never happen again in my life, I think, and I say, as harshly as I can, that neither he nor I will be sitting around—not even over tins of caviar and French champagne—chitchatting with people whose favorite conversation is: We are planning a fabulous trip in the spring, and what great trips are you planning? That’ll be awkward. I say it unkindly and my sister, who loves me, says, Got it.