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

[paniolo99.livejournal.com]

Dear Brett:

I remember all those nights after movies: talking, talking, talking. Time felt slow, then. I remember knowing that if I put my head on your shoulder, it would be welcomed. You were ease to me, you were connection. I never had to worry if you were my friend or if you cared about me. I remember when you called me in Kuwait, at the darkest part of my time there and told me that I had to come home, right away. There are days I wish I had.

I regret not staying to play Go with you that night. I regret that you have never met my little boy, the reason I stayed in Kuwait all those years ago. I regret not reaching out to you as you reached out to me. So many regrets. I hope you can find your way through this one, my dearest funny Brett, and find your way back again to us...to me, to this world.

I want so much for you. Most of all, I want you to make whatever peace you can find in this, whatever that might be. I understand if you choose not to be, to leave us - I will cry, but I understand - but I hope you choose the here and now. It's worth it, as hard as it is sometimes. It's worth it.

Love,
Courtney