I travel for work in November and December and share the story to anyone with ears—photo crews, Uber drivers, baristas, armrest-sharing airplane passengers. My inbox fills with communications—Rich, Carol and Janet—and also new cousins. And second cousins. I barely know my first cousins from mom and dad’s bloodlines so this is an entirely new experience of family. My eldest cousin sends recipes that our grandma Isabelle loved to make (and Charlie loved to eat.) Others email cherished memories and photos. Janet shares two self-published collections of his poetry, Carol an elaborate genealogy tree that dates back to the 17th century. A file in my closet balloons with Charlie’s old postcards, photo prints, fliers, business cards, even rejection letters from publishers. This family holds tight to loved ones.
One package from Rich contains a compilation of his favorite “Chuck tunes” burned onto a CD. I immediately copy it over to my music library.
All the tracks are written and sung by Charlie except one. Fellow Michigander and musician Neil Woodward had read about Charlie’s untimely death and was inspired to write the lyrical ballad, “Dark Mystery.” At the end of the tune, Neil samples a few stanzas from Charlie’s song Whippoorwill—a short acapella tune, recorded in rounds. Charlie’s lilting voice echos the bird’s sweet, lonesome notes—Gone to bed is the setting sun / night is coming and day is done / whippoorwill, whippoorwill has just begun / whippoorwill, whippoorwill has just begun.../
Though Neil never knew Charlie, his lyrics feel intimate, holding me in the somber tragedy of a life that “goes by too fast.” His song helps me inch closer to feeling what I can’t yet feel. I email Neil to thank him and he replies with a haunting story about the making of the song.
I wish you could have been in the studio when we flew Charlie’s “Whippoorwill” into my recording. I truly cannot describe how spooked we were, as his presence in the room was so physical. Still gives me goosebumps when I hear it. I had not conceived of having his voice in there, I have no idea of how or when the concept occurred to me. Nevertheless, when we hit the record button, there he was, and now there he remains! Al, the engineer commented that Charles came in exactly as he was supposed to. I couldn’t speak for quite a while, it seemed like it was out of our control. How could I write and play a completely different song, and wind up in the last twelve bars at the exact tempo and pitch as Charlie’s 25 year old vinyl record? We sure weren’t gonna mess with it, needless to say.
I fantasize, if Charlie mysteriously showed up during Neil’s creation, maybe he’d come out and play with me too?
I am clearly a product of Charlie’s DNA, his physicality, his affinities, his “nature.” But I long to know the “nurture” part of our relationship, even if beyond the grave. So I begin a game of call and response with his poetry—reflecting on his choice of words, rhythm, alliterations, the details of a craft he studied and honed throughout his short life. I don’t have any of the training or skill he had so engaging in this way makes me feel like his kid — the eager-to-please child, the anxious, bun-headed dancer, the young adult longing to know her purpose. Through his stanzas, his imagery and even his choice of punctuation, I become his student—appreciating his life’s work and in turn, nurturing me in my own.
Spare Ribs is it possible to leave a part of me behind (you ask which part?) but what takes its place and these parts strewn over time and space in houses hearts on hillsides stages or paper are more than hubcaps along a freeway? -Charles Brauer and my response… IT IS possible to leave a part of you behind (Do you need to ask which part?) I take your place in these parts strewn over time and space in limbs lungs on screens film or paper no part is more than, but together a whole, the hub of you-me finding our way-free
As conversations with the Brauer’s grow and deepen, mom decides to chime in. Any last thread of her “Parson Larson” propriety or shame falls away as she, too, is embraced with open arms. This could have gone wrong in a thousand-and-one ways, but instead the Brauer’s lead with love. My grandfather Carl Brauer’s obituary reads: His most lasting legacy is surely with his family. He and Isabelle lived very deliberately to create a close and loving family with bonds that have affected and included all the generations to this day. And though I never got to meet Carl or Isabelle, I’m humbled to be welcomed into their legacy.
I never fathomed a sequel to “You Belong to the Mystery,” nor a mystery with real names, laughter and lineage. I feel sometimes as if Charlie, wearing a cloak of invisibility, is performing a magic trick on all of us. Am I the rabbit pulled from the hat? The Brauer’s lost a son, brother, uncle and cousin, they grieved the loss, adapted to life without him, and then three decades later, I show up. This kind of magic is not for the faint of heart—many would choose to shove the rabbit back in the hat, or claim she’s not real. But I am real, as are my family. So the soft, innocent question of belonging sweeps us into each other’s arms.
But a Dark Mystery still remains.
My head spins. Like Shrodinger’s cat, Charlie is trapped in quantum possibility. He is both alive AND dead, and our grief boxed in eternal uncertainty.
It’s improbable that Charlie’s fate was anything other than a tragic drowning. And I want to leave it at that. But when random anecdotes and details surface to suggest otherwise, my conviction wavers. And then fantasy gets the better of me and I entertain alternate realities where my biological dad returns—at a film premiere of his life story, a private message from 23andme, in the comments of a serialized memoir shared online.
Late December Carol sends a package containing a photocopied entry from one of his journals. The actual diaries are boxed in their sister Janet’s garage; she is poring through them slowly, gleaning insight into his hidden persona—the stuff we work out on our own or with a therapist and don’t imagine someday, someone, might read them. But I get it. I read a few of dad’s journals after his death, hoping to find a phrase that would help me understand—what, I don’t know. With no goodbye or closure, I’m glad I’m not the only one trying to make sense of the senseless.
I unfold the barely legible journal entry. I relate to his hastiness — emotions spilling onto paper have no pretense. There’s no time to make it look good and urgency precedes craft. I am careless when I put thoughts on paper with pen in hand. I don’t want to waste time constructing ideas, I just need black-ink validation. It takes time to decipher his words but I like that his messy script forces a slow down.
I hold the first page up to the light. It’s the premise for a serialized fiction column he’s considering for Sailing Magazine:
A young man sells his car and drains his accounts to purchase a wooden sailboat, only to learn that the seller didn’t own the boat, it had been stolen. He can’t simply turn the boat over to the cops because he’d lose everything. And because he has no solid proof of purchase, with the boat now in his possession, he becomes the primary suspect.
[…]
He fails to clear himself and resorts to a fake drowning. A storm comes up, he abandons the boat at sea, making it look as if he had fallen overboard but really just disappears aboard another boat his confidant is piloting. The boat is found adrift and the young man (after an extensive search) is presumed drowned. His plan succeeds—the boat is returned to its rightful owner and the young man is clear by default. It’s hard to prosecute a dead man. He is free to start anew.
I flip back to the first page for a date. Charlie wrote the story six months before he disappeared — in a sailing accident.
While going through Charlie’s home after his disappearance, his siblings also discovered on a shelf, How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. This succinct guide for starting a new identity includes chapters on planning a disappearance, arranging for new identification, finding work, establishing credit, and pseudocide (creating the impression of one's own death).
My head spins. Like Shrodinger’s cat, Charlie is trapped in quantum possibility. He is both alive AND dead, and our grief boxed in eternal uncertainty.
I look back through emails with the Brauer’s. Rarely do they write “died” or “deceased.” Instead, they use words like “vanished,” “disappeared,” and “went missing.” When a body is never recovered, it makes sense to use these words. But do they actually question his death? What in his character would make pseudocide even the remotest of possibilities? When they share anecdotes and describe Charlie as “spontaneous” and “mischievous,” just how mischievous? Arriving at family gatherings unannounced, charming the pants off nieces and nephews and then disappearing without notice for months at a time is odd, but not pathologically odd. The desire for a clean slate, a fresh start and a brand new day can sometimes be tempting, especially when up against a wall. But a solid, loving family renders this unthinkable or the executioner, unhinged.
I resolve: shipwrecked with finitude at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
(But I’ll keep reading comments and private DM’s with bated breath.)
I’m reading, listening, learning your story in a very non-linear fashion (which, somehow, feels appropriate) and I’m thinking back to when I first began, thinking ‘oh, Kimberly’s memoir, cool, it’ll be so nice to learn more about her’--never for a moment could I have imagined what you’ve lived through, held, had to navigate. And yet it makes total sense, of course someone as wise, empathetic, emotionally intelligent and in tune with life and all it encompasses as you would, perhaps, have had to live through something so extraordinary to become so extraordinary.
Whoa. The synopsis is wild, and uncanny. But my hope is that it wasn't planned. One may never know. But I feel this: "My head spins. Like Shrodinger’s cat, Charlie is trapped in quantum possibility. He is both alive AND dead, and our grief boxed in eternal uncertainty." Maybe that's all we can cling to?