PART 3: When Your 6'2" Brother Arrives at Your Door in a Small but Heavy Box

✨THE CASE CONCERNING THE WALLET & THE CASE✨

Judith’s aunt from the town not far from her finally picked up the briefcase and wallet from her and shipped them. They destroyed his wallet that I said meant something to me by duct-taping it to the briefcase. 'Judith' was a friend of my brother Greg. Not only did the adhesive take a good 20 minutes or more to remove from the case, the wallet, my countertop and hands, but it stripped the leather down to the suede in spots. I wanted that wallet more than any of his money because of memories and I had told Judith that. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by his brown leather bifold wallet. For some reason, I thought it was really cool.

When the case and wallet arrived, I saw he had the sane style wallet decades later and it really upset me what was done to it. The amount of duct tape was overkill and done in such a way that screamed, “You want this wallet?!!! Here it is.” anger and frustration going into it. They could have put it in plastic.

Decades later, he was still buying brown leather bifold wallets because the thing about him was that unlike me, he never changed certain things.  I guess the wallet had become a symbol of that solidness. 

The briefcase (pictured) is beautiful and probably more my style than his. I was glad they didn’t ruin it by smashing or prying the locking mechanism as I requested since I needed the documents. It has permanent scarring on the other side of it from long strips of duct tape though. I took it to a locksmith and then had to go through the only physical things he owned. Greg was a virtuoso. He began playing guitar when he was 14 or 16. He was one of the best guitarists in the world and the world never got to know. The flood and bugs destroyed his guitars (pictured).

Without the briefcase containing his documents and that wallet, I had nothing to work with in taking care of his affairs. I was glad it was finally shipped, but like the urn I bought for him, the person who held them kept them too long.  I was painted as a monster without compassion  by the one who held them and talked to like some stalker freak by the one who finally shipped them, as I held it together well enough to do what only I could do, trying to come up with options for a sick person to more easily be able to ship them.   

As for the urn, the one I had it shipped to was supposed to tell the funeral home she received it and she never said a word as I was emailing back and forth, asking the director if she got it yet. Finally, I just asked her to add $100 to the bill and re-invoice me. If the one who held the urn was too sick to pick up a phone, she was in no position to hold my brother's cremains as perhaps her illness would prove fatal after all. Then, what would become of my brother's cremains? I had to make a tough decision and it was the only viable option, so shipment had to be paid for as well as for picking up the urn from her house.