A Surreal Symmetry – Travels With Brian: The Eastern Front (Eastern Europe & Me #20g)

There have been three great traumas in my life. The day my father walked out on our family when I was a child, the day I broke my neck, and the last days I spent with Brian just before he died. After each one of these traumas, I spiraled out of control. In the first two cases, it took me years to regain my footing after attempting various acts of self-destruction. My father’s disappearing act left a hole in my family’s life from which we recovered, but never fully healed. The broken neck sent me to the bottle where I nearly drank myself to death due to survivor's guilt. A less than sobering experience that I somehow managed to survive.

As for Brian’s death, I am still trying to recover and wonder if I ever will. His death sent me from one job to another and then another. I could not run away from my problems since I carried them with me. I began seeking professional affirmation because personal fulfillment no longer seemed possible. My social existence narrowed to the margins and has stayed that way ever since. One thing I have learned is that life goes on, but the past is ever present. The very fact of Brian's existence kept me anchored for years. For the last decade of his life, we were physically apart and spiritually together. The greatest truths of unconditional love are rarely spoken because they do not need to be. Brian was always there for me. And then suddenly he was gone. 

Dramatic Instincts – Troubled Times

“Mister Brian is dying. They call his illness the silent death.” His son-in-law told me that not long after I landed at the Atlanta airport. No one was aware until it was much too late that Brian’s heart was failing him. The doctor told him he had only a small chance of surviving surgery. Right then and there, he made what is in my opinion the most courageous decision of his life. He would end it in peace on his own terms rather than risk the operating room. By the time I arrived in South Carolina, he was only a few days away from drawing his last breath. Seeing this giant of a man, a larger-than-life figure both physically and mentally, reduced to a weakened shell of his former self was deeply disturbing. He could hardly talk and spent most of the day sleeping. And yet he seemed fully aware of all that was going on around him. I was later told that my presence had a calming influence on him. I noticed a wry smile swept across his face when I approached him. He was still with me, I found that comforting.

Speaking of comfort, his wife Candace made sure to turn the television on while he lay there resting. For a man of supreme intellectual powers, Brian had to be the greatest lover of television I have known. I believe this love was the manifestation of a repressed dramatic instinct. He once confided to me that while at university he had tried his hand at writing plays. On this day, there was plenty of drama playing out on the television. The opposite of peace was portrayed on the screen. Earlier in 2014, Russia had sent soldiers to occupy and annex Crimea which was then part of Ukraine. Now pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine supported by the Russian military were trying to take more Ukrainian territory. This violation of a sovereign European nation’s borders upended the post-World War II rules-based order which had brought peace and unprecedented prosperity to the continent. Europe was reverting to more troubled times. The Eastern Front was undergoing a sinister resurrection. No one knew at the time just how retro Russia would go, but the annexation of Crimea and War in the Donbas were harbingers of horrors to come.

Fits & Starts – The Cycle of History

Brian had been born during the maelstrom of World War II. There were reminders in the room of that conflict and not just on the television. On a table beside his bed, his wife had placed a wedding photo of his parents Mary and George. Mary sheltered her only son while bombs fell from the sky. George enlisted in the Royal Navy a day after Great Britain went to war in 1939. He was stationed on convoy ships that were sunk multiple times. He managed to survive those terrifying experiences. George also lost a thumb in a boiler room accident. This did not keep him from duty. Men like George had ensured that Brian would grow up in a world safe from fascism. Now fascism was back in in the form of Putin’s Russia, threatening the international order. In a bizarre historical irony, the main successor of the Soviet Union - which did more than any nation to defeat Nazi Germany - morphed into a fascist force unseen in Europe since 1945. This was alarming in the extreme.

Brian would have found all this fascinating and unsurprising. One time I asked him his opinion of whether history repeated itself. He raised his right hand, then said “history is like this.” Brian then proceeded to move his hand sharply up and down as though it were riding the waves of a tumultuous sea. The meaning was clear. History proceeds or recedes in fits and starts. Progress is not linear. Regress occurs with startling frequency. Brian and I had that conversation many years before anyone could have imagined what would transpire between Ukraine and Russia. The postwar world was fracturing. Nothing lasts forever. That includes not only nations, but also us.

The Ultimate Reminder - Prisoners of History

The days I spent beside Brian’s bedside were extremely difficult. I was watching a man who played a preeminent role in my life slowly dying before my eyes. There was nothing I could do, nothing any of us could do. This was a reminder that you have very little control in life and no control over death. All you can do is watch and wait. The entire world shrank to the size of that room. Brian was surrounded by his wife, daughters and me. There was a surreal symmetry with the rest of his life in that moment. Brian had dedicated himself to history. Now here we were as prisoners of our personal history with him. There was no escape. None of us would have wanted it any other way.