A Grieving Brother's Guide to Old Photographs, Memories, and Coming to Terms With Unimaginable Loss

Before we begin, I owe you a sincere thank you for coming here to read this. If there's ever a time when your average Barstool fan is looking to click a blog that has a title that sounds like one of the pamphlets they have in the waiting room at a therapist's office, it's not a Friday in the middle of July. So I appreciate the leap of faith you took to end up here. I hope to make it so you get something out of it besides listening to an aging manchild who spends half his professional hours obsessing over which Hollywood 10 Tom Brady might be seducing working out his personal issues. 

That said, in 20-plus years of working for the Portnoy Crime Syndicate, every once in a while I've taken the risk of leaning back against a tree and exposing my soft underbelly to all the hungry predators. And the responses have been generally very positive. Typically from people who've been dealing with similar circumstances as we walk through this vale of tears. Which I appreciate.

By way of background, back in the fall, I lost two brothers within a couple of weeks of each other. And because this needs to be said right now in these days of mental health and addiction crises, both from natural causes. First Jim. Who, in an absolutely insane synchronicity, was then immortalized in a Pizza Review of his favorite townie pub the very morning I was delivering his eulogy:

Then on the day of Jim's wake, Jack had to be rushed to the hospital and never recovered. "Dying of a broken heart" is a figure of speech. But in his case, it was quite literal. According to his loved ones and his cardiologist. 

I opened with that song choice not just because this bittersweet ballad is a staple of the Lite Rock genre, and the sort of thing they play while you're ignoring the sad pamphlets in your therapist's office. (Probably. I have no idea. This is website is my therapist's office.) But because for most of 2024 Jimbo was working out of state and, on his Friday trip home, would typically send a "homecoming"-themed song to our family text chain. Until one time, he sent this. Along with a few old photos of him and his late wife, who succumbed to cancer many years earlier. It was, as you can imagine, profoundly moving. Made even more so now that I just received over 50 photos from a dozen or so years ago of us and some of our cousins. Here's X Jerry to explain:

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… Paul and Phil, who grew up across the street from us. And my brothers Jim and Jack. All four of these cousins were best friends. All four went to God in 2024.  

Seeing them in peak health and moments of such joy and bonding is at once a reminder of how blessed we were, and how profound and it was to lose these men I looked up to. It’s beautiful and devastating in equal measure. Now all that remains of these adventures we went on are these photos and my and Bobby’s memories.

GK Chesterton said,  “The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”  Tell your family you love them today. 

And here's all the crew. Bobby is in the red hat. Jim is behind our mighty catch. And to the far right is the crew he hired for the day:

For those four trips, we were the kings of all we surveyed. Wheels up hours before the sun appeared on the horizon. Full throttle out to Stellwagen Bank. For some of the passengers, beers for breakfast. Coincidentally, puking over the side for some of those same passengers. The nonstop banter that comes naturally to a group of guys who are blood first and friends second, but is typically just incomprehensible to anyone who didn't grow up in the family. Sometimes this is referred to as Love Language. But not by us. Because our fathers didn't raise pussies. 

At some point on our first journey, I reverted to my factor setting, which is throwing out a Jaws quote. When I did, every other soul on board went, "Welp! There it is," reached for their wallets, and money changed hands. They had a pool going. They'd been paying attention every day since 1975.

When we finally hooked these majestic creatures, we took turns reeling them in, switching off over the course of hours it took to subdue the savage leviathan. Though Jim was by far the most experienced among us, and typically made the final effort hauling it in. I took a shift, while wearing a brace for a torn ACL. But tapped out after a while, handed the gear over to Jim, and talked about myself in heroic terms the whole rest of the day. Just the youngest one in the group, playing the Little Brother role to the last. 

We finally boated the fish after a few hours and cut it up. Everyone took turns taking bites out of the heart, which is a tradition even more nauseating than puking breakfast beers over the side of the boat. I have photos of that little blood ritual too, but will spare you. As the sun set, we drank and feasted and told tales of our adventures. At night, we anchored. With no land in sight. Not another boat to be seen. Just us, alone in the world. Under a canopy of stars so bright you could make out the Milky Way. We did nothing but talk. Mostly about nonsense.  We retold old family stories for the 500,000th time. Talked about our Weymouth neighborhood growing up. I'm sure UFOs came up, since they always did. To be clear, just as a conversational topic; if one had actually come up I would never have shut up about it since. One of our group didn't understand how the sun, planets, stars, galaxies, and the rest of the universe are laid out. And I did the best I could to explain it after a dozen or Sam Adams. Someone made a playlist of all songs about boats and fishing. Someone else hated it, so it got turned off. Someone blew out the bathroom, which didn't go over well. But it was hilarious, in that way toilet-related comedy always kills with a Male Only audience. 

It was part Hemingway, part Jimmy Buffett song, part Friar's Club Roast. I wish I could come up with a better pop culture analogy than that. But I honestly can't find one. Because in fiction the only time a group of male relatives ever gets together to talk, they're planning a mob war. Which might say something about our culture. Or the state of the American family. Though I think it says more about how unique our dynamic was and how blessed I am to have been born into this family.

That night under the grandeur of God's creation is what I'll remember most. The voices of seven tiny men carrying out over the vastness of a dead calm ocean. No one saying anything worth remembering, but I'll never forget it. Just us enjoying being together, without ever actually saying we were enjoying being together. The stars slowly rotated overhead. But time kind of stood still for us. 

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Just not long enough. Death remains undefeated. What's so hard about seeing these pictures is that these four men I looked up to - cousins by definition but really brothers and friends by the way our dads (brothers and friends in their own right) chose to raise us on the same street - look so healthy. It wouldn't last. Over time, Paul had strokes, declined, and passed in June of last year. Jim died suddenly and was reunited with his wife right after Columbus Day weekend. I pulled the sheet over his head at the hospital. Phil was in the early stages of early onset dementia then. Then finally succumbed in November. He and Jack were born three days apart, spent their lives together, and left this world on the same day. Which is tragic and profoundly beautiful at the same time. 

Which is why I'm here at a keyboard, still trying to process it all. The death part, but just as importantly, the 60-plus years of life that came before. Those fishing expeditions were special beyond description. And I'm forever indebted to Cap'n Bob for having his cousins aboard and making those memories. But now they're memories to him and me alone. The other guys we could remember them with are now themselves just memories. My brain lacks the capacity to comprehend that. So I'm relying on my soul to take its turn at the rod and reel. 

I'll wrap this up with one of the underrated speeches in movie history. Because it's been on my mind since I opened this picture files a couple of weeks ago:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain." 

Thanks again for reading. Now please, do go call your family.