May 19, 2020

Brandon would have been 43 years old today. He came into the world only six months after me. I was an only child. He and his older brother were the closest I had to siblings when I was small. Some of my earliest memories are of them. And Brandon was like a constant motif in my life, a reminder of my childhood memories and of the close bond between my mother and his father, a man who also died too young, before he reached the age of 40.

Brandon and I always found a way to maintain a connection, no matter how far apart we roamed. We hadn’t lived in the same state since we were children but still we managed to have periodic bonding sessions whenever we found ourselves at the same place on the map. We partied in Lansing, Michigan and he showed me a glimpse of his world when he was a student at Michigan State. We went to dinner in Los Angeles and he got to meet some of my closest friends from college. We hung out in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, sampling restaurants, drinking fancy cocktails, and listening to a live jazz trio. We got deep and philosophical while talking for hours in our grandmother’s living room when I visited Detroit. He tutored me on search engine marketing. We’d dream up music projects and concept albums. It always felt easy to go back into our closeness, no matter how much time we’d been away from each other. We’d part ways saying that we should do it more often.

When Brandon got sick, that homing mechanism we had for each other was activated once again. He was living in LA and doing much better, we thought, after a miraculous recovery from surgery to remove a significant portion of a brain tumor. But his seizures and tumor were back and he had to be admitted to a hospital. By chance, I was in Oakland for work. I was the family member who could get to him quickest. I flew down immediately and stayed with him to keep him company and to make sure that my aunt in Detroit was dialed in, whenever his doctors made their rounds. No matter how grim the news, he insisted on remaining positive. “I feel fine,” he told me. Why couldn’t that be enough, he asked. Why should a bunch of diagnostics negate his will to enjoy the moment?

We wandered the hospital ward together. I remember the walls were covered with images of the cosmos, galaxies and stars. Brandon was a deep thinker, his father and my mother raised us on sci fi and fantasy, and this was stuff he loved. He often struggled with words because of the cognitive damage from his tumor, the surgery, and seizures, but these images motivated him to conversation. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to the shimmery infinity of universe, “There is so much more out there. This life isn’t everything. There’s so much more.” I treasured that time with him, even though I hated that he had to be back in a hospital. When I was sitting at his bedside, he said, “This is the most time we’ve spent together since we were kids.” That broke my heart.

Brandon left his body almost 4 years ago. He was smart, kind, compassionate, resourceful, creative, talented, uniquely individual, funny, irreverent, contemplative, independent, and warm. After he left us, I found that all the amazing things I already knew about him were just the tip of the iceberg. I met his massive community of devoted lifelong friends, people who were as natural and easy for me to hang out with as if I’d befriended them myself. I heard hilarious stories about their good times. They shared music he made, love poems he wrote, photos, legendary antics, tales of mischief, and thoughtful gestures. Brandon and I had more things in common than I ever knew and, moreover, he was so much that I aspire to become. He is my inspiration to do my best to embrace life, love music, think deep, and be irrepressibly creative.