Serious and Grim News: Brett

[dwenius]

My very dear friend Brett Summers is currently in Columbia University Hospital in Missouri, and his condition is extremely grave. He has been struggling with alcoholism for some time and developed Hepatitis over the past year. Several stints of rehab were only marginally successful and about a month ago he fell into a coma in his house. He has been in the hospital since then with acute liver and kidney failure. His family and doctors are unsure whether he will live a week, or a month,
or —

I'm flying out tomorrow and hope that he will be out from sedation long enough to know that I am there. If not, I'll play him the Orb, and read to him from Italo Calvino, and leave him the get well cards that Calvin and Rose made, and otherwise keep him company through midday Thursday.

Please send your love and good thoughts for him. Anything you post here, I will do my best to relay. I'll either read it aloud to him or print your words and leave them by his bedside, or both.

Comments

[ms-marrilee.livejournal.com]

yeah, words fail me. though 'fucking hell' feels pretty good. stunned. i will think and dream on something better to say to him.....

[canetoad.livejournal.com]

i will think and dream on something better to say to him.....

Please do; he needs to know how much he's loved.

[(Anonymous)]

b,

you will always be just 'b' to me. i have no idea why. i remember, first, being naked in front of you and you telling me, in detail, in the most non-sexual way, in the middle of a crowded field of people just how this curve of mine was fantastic and that one was amazing...writing it seems so strange now, how did i let a stranger do that? but it wasn't 'let,' it was 'need' - somehow, at 29 I'd never really been truly naked in front of someone ever i don't think, maybe not even myself....perhaps for fear of critique. I had no idea that hearing someone tell all the ways my body was beautiful was even an option. And then you skipped away with bunny ears and mallet, having smoothed out the troubled bits of my psyche a bit. I had forgotten until today that it had even happened, let alone how powerful it was.

And then, probably just a day or two later I said to you, "It can be this way always." And I knew you were one of my kind or, rather, that I was one of yours.

It has been a long journey since that moment - keeping it in that moment, striving for authenticity in the face of so much....it isn't easy, but it is worth it. No matter how we alter our perception or surroundings, we always come back to the same head space we've known since as far back as we can remember - it is significant. We are meant to be where we are, not to escape from it.

I want for you peace, where you're at. I know you will find it, at this bend in the road or the next. Everything is okay.

I would not be the person I am today had we not met and been friends. Thank you. I love you. You're a squirly, squirmy, swirly elf of a man and I adore you. I saw your tenderness and generosity, always. Your journey has mattered and will continue to. You make soft, elegant, beautiful ripples that float still unto an endless shore. I hope you find the soft, tender places within you and feel their power, and love them, and let them love you.

Your softness has power and I am so honored that I could share it with you for a minute. I love you, friend.