Are You There? Yes, I'm Here

The photo above was taken a few years ago, before my brother David’s kidney failure and years of dialysis began to take their greatest toll. Next to him is my sister, Kate, who, along with our mother, June, brought more than enough love and joy to David’s life in his final years to make them worth living—despite the pain and suffering of his myriad health issues—up to his last living moments.

Those moments came two nights ago—peacefully, under hospice care—in a sea of love and tenderness only a mother and sister can fathom.

As for brothers, that’s a different kind of love—a love that idolizes, cherishes, challenges, kids, and cajoles. A love that gives and takes, in turn, that struggles and competes and laughs and cries in ways only brothers can.

David and I shared a bedroom in our youth. He was always in the top bunk, just above me in the dark, and that comforted me. Night after night, I’d say to my older brother, “David, are you there?” And he’d reply, “Yes, I’m here.” And with those words I could close my eyes and sleep, knowing he was above.

This, I later realized, was a kind of call and response, a form of communication that lies at the heart of art, music, prayer, and, indeed, any attempt to truly reach another. Even a painting, silent on the wall, is the painter calling out—often over great spans of time and distance—to the viewer, standing silently before it.

But it’s when we’re suffering that call and response becomes most necessary, most essential to all that is human in us. Are you there? Yes, I’m here. As Michael Ignatieff writes in his beautiful book On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times, the word consolation, comes from the Latin consolor, to find solace together.”

So, Dear Reader, let us now find solace together. Below is a poem I wrote a few years back for my big brother David Edward Judge (1962-2023)—the greatest lover of plants and animals and all that is good and kind in this world that I have ever known.

A Faraway Place

                       for my brother David

You call to inform me that the Travel Channel 

is airing a program at 9:00 or 10:30 this evening 

on “the wild edibles of Costa Rica.”

Neither of us has ever been to Costa Rica, 

nor have we, as far as I can remember, 

ever eaten wild edibles. Yet I understand 

by the tone of your voice, which I have heard

deepen and age since childhood, 

that you’re excited by the prospect of learning 

about wild edibles in a jungle 

thousands of miles away. 

You speak softly of Costa Rica, 

of wild edibles, of those things that could save us 

in a faraway place, 

if only we could recognize them.

For information on kidney disease and organ donation click here to contact the National Kidney Foundation.