Conversations With My Dead Brother

The Music and Mah-Johngg Never End at Dave's Place

My only sibling, my brother David, was driving to work at the catering establishment he managed in South Florida in 2004, when his vision got blurry. He pulled over until the blurriness passed, but when he got to work, he had a seizure. At the hospital, the diagnosis was not good; glioblastoma mulitforme, many malignancies in unreachable parts of the brain. The doctors gave David six months. He made it for three years, some in relative remission (though I probably should not have let him drive during one of my many visits to Florida in those years).

He died on August 25, 2007, after 10 days of at-home hospice. He was 54, three years younger than I. When I arrived at the beginning of those 10 days, while he was still lucid, I brought a three-DVD set of Three Stooges tapes. His epitaph, in a mausoleum in Boca Raton-- the promised land for our people!--reads, "For duty and humanity!" from a favorite Stooges episode. We forgave each other's childhood crimes and misdemeanors: me for using illegal "claw" moves when our imitations of professional wrestlers became real fights, him for jumping off a see-saw so I would fall off the high end.

When I finally got sober in 2010, I used all the tools that were recommended to me. I particularly liked going to a weekly 11th Step meditation group. Meditation is non-judgmental; there is no such thing as "bad meditation," but it does improve with practice. I was again making frequent trips to South Florida, where our mother spent a long time dying, having lost the will to live after both David and her husband Hyman passed during that sad year of 2007. Our mother died in 2012, five years and three days after David left the planet.

I visited my brother's "grave" on the second or third floor of this air-conditioned mausoleum. It was very quiet. I went into the deepest meditation I have ever experienced. David spoke to me. He apologized for leaving me to take care of our difficult mother, since he was very close to her, and I was not. I'm still not. He was proud of my sobriety. I told him mom would be with him soon. The connection was so deep that for years, on his birthday, or on the anniversary of his passing, I would feel an intense meditative connection, and I posted these conversations on Facebook. They weren't just stories; they felt real. Having posthumously achieved his goal of running his own restaurant, he told me stories about the recently departed musicians and other celebrities who dropped in. Dave's Place, or Cafe, had become the place to be in the afterlife.

Feb. 10, 2013: Today would have been the 60th birthday of my brother David (1953-2007). The last time we connected via spirit express, he told me our mother, who joined him in August 2012, has started smoking again. That is tolerated with bemusement up in the place (Ben Franklin still smokes a pipe, btw) because while smoking can't hurt you up there, much less kill you, nobody really needs the nicotine, either: It's a total placebo.

Feb. 10, 2014: Today is my brother David's 61st birthday, and his seventh since leaving the planet. I asked him to look after Phil H. [Philip Seymour Hoffman] if he shows up at Dave's Cafe, but he hadn't seen him yet . . . still detoxing, perhaps, before getting to the next good place. But David did say that not long ago at all, Pete Seeger walked right in, set right down, pulled out a banjo and sang, "To everything . . . there is a season . . ." And everybody sang along "Turn, turn, turn." "I'd say there wasn't a dry eye in the house," my brother told me, with a light touch of sarcasm, "except here nobody needs to cry anymore."

Feb. 11, 2015: My brother David (1953-2007) usually calls on his birthday (February 10); it's not one of those "you should have called"/"no, YOU should have called" arguments we used to have before he passed to the Next Great Place. I don't have his number: It's really, really unlisted, and changes all the time. Anyway, his colleagues at his restaurant and club, Dave's Place, threw him a surprise party. His partners Moe, Larry and Curly, took care of the food and hosting. The pies and cakes were flying and no face was spared. Surprise guest Robin W., dressed in "Mrs. Doubtfire" drag, delivered the toasts. Our mother, who started going to Dave's when she passed in 2012, was as usual behind the pop culture curve. "She's really funny, but what a homely woman!" she told David. Mom is again puffing away on the unfiltered Camel cigarettes she once adored. It's not called smoking; Where she sits is known as the "cloud creation" section.

August 25, 2015: My brother David has been gone for 8 years. I worried that the messages from him were becoming less frequent, but just before midnight he called. As readers of this space know, he has the restaurant of his earthly dreams, Dave's Cafe, or Dave's Place, with unpretentious food and drink and a smoking section for our mother, who joined him there August 28, 2012. (He installed a vintage cigarette machine for our mom, pack of Camels, 25 cents.) He told me he had been talking with B.B. King, who drops in with two Lucille's: his guitar, and Lucille Ball, just to blow people's minds, except there aren't minds, as we understand them, to be blown. But B.B. gave my brother his recipe for ribs, and David says they are amazing. In fact, he told me, "Wayne, these ribs are to die for." One of these days, my brother. But not quite yet, until it's time. I asked if he could instead send a few racks via Amazon Prime. "What the heck is that?" he said, not really saying "heck." And two day shipping is not yet available from where he resides in the Next Good Place.

April 10, 2016: Ah, yes, Happy Siblings Day. I would let my brother and only sibling David know but he exited Earth almost nine years ago. There is no wi-fi in Dave's Place, but it is in "the Cloud," so to speak. He is getting to meet too many of our favorite musicians and too many of my friends and colleagues. I'll have a more detailed report when the conditions for meditative connection are optimum. I'm not posting a photo of us because images of his Earth self cause too much static when trying to get the spiritual connection going. But I can feel it starting to rattle and hum. (I think he liked U2 more than I did, and there was a time I liked them quite a lot.) We didn't get to see too many concerts together, but we did see Bowie's "Glass Spider" show at Nassau Coliseum together. As we walked down the steep steps to our seats on the floor of the arena, we both had panic attacks. My brother will tell me more about what the star thought about that so-so show the next time David Bowie drops by Dave's Place. Moe, Larry, and Curly are busy making the shmurer (handmade) matzah, which he is planning to have for the seder featuring our grandparents, our great-great-grandparents, our great-great-great grandparents and right on down the line. The prophet Elijah shows up every year and drinks the full glass of wine left for him. "And then he wants more, and more, and then a few glasses of slivovitz [fruit brandy], just like you," David says. "Except he doesn't wobble away in a stupor, like you did."

Feb. 10, 2017: The phone released itself from its charger at 3 am and plunked me in the head. "Wish me happy birthday, bro!" David said. I was going to say "why not hit me up with the annual birthday call in the afternoon" and remembered, There are no clocks where David is, having died in 2007. I didn't hear much from him last year, but Dave's Place, his food and entertainment emporium, had a banner 2016. Bowie's arrival caused a big fuss, and he immediately joined the Sometime in New York City band, led by John Lennon and Lou Reed. "Que pasa New York," my brother fairly gloated, knowing that he now gets to hear music that I could only dream of. "And BTW, tell your haughty rock critic friends that Glenn Frey is here too, and not in the Other Place." Leonard Cohen sang "Hotel California" in a Chanukah guitar pull, and it went over well with everyone except our mother, Phyllis, who has had her own table in the smoking section at Dave's Place since she arrived almost five years to the day after my brother, in 2012. "Terrible voice," she said. Dave tried to tell her that was kind of the point, but our mother gave him one of those "Are you nuts?" looks. Dave had to go: he had to find some cigarettes so our mother could enjoy her morning coffee.

August 28, 2018: I'd been meaning to talk to my brother David, who died 11 years ago, ask if he'd seen Aretha, among others, in his saloon and restaurant in the Next Great Place. Then I realized that his yahrtzeit, the anniversary of his passing, was Saturday, August 25: The same day John McCain died, of exactly the same kind of brain cancer, glioblastoma, that had expedited David's departure much too soon. I wondered what the protocols were like when he met McCain, whether they fist-bumped (they did), and whether they talk about their disease and treatment (they do not). "McCain will never have to pay for a drink here," my brother said. Not that they use money there: It's just an idea, a concept. Little fuss was made about Aretha. "She was here before she even got here," my brother said cryptically. He explained that Aretha's music is hard-wired into the souls and spirits of everyone who arrives, whether they know it or not. My mother, whose yahrtzeit was yesterday, and her friends Ruth Jacobi and Norma Ackerman wanted to know if Aretha played mah-johngg, but they were told that Aretha does not play games. David does keep "Dr. Feelgood" on the jukebox. "You know how we made fun of those old people in Florida who always talked about doctors and medicine and aches and pains? They didn't like it. That's all they had to do," he said. So every once in a while, David said, he fires up "Dr. Feelgood." Nobody is sick anymore, although some people like to take their meds out of habit. And mom and her mah-johngg partners, without missing a beat, sing and clap along: "Don't send me no doctor! Filling me up with all those pills!" Then, amid their usual cigarette smoke and risque conversation, it's back to four bam! Three crack!

Dec. 24, 2019: Hadn't heard from my brother David (1953-2007) in awhile, as he is busy running a saloon in the afterlife. He told me Baba Ram Dass showed up at Dave's Place, friendly and unpretentious. "Hi, I'm Rich Alpert," he said. Steely Dan's "Boddhisattva" was playing on the celestial jukebox. Alpert ordered a shot of Sandoz 250 from the single-batch acid menu (my first, btw, back in 1966). A fan recognizes Alpert as Ram Dass and starts effusing about his most famous book. "What was the name of it?" Ram Dass quietly but quickly mumbles, "Be Here Now." My brother, drying glasses and a little perplexed, mishears Alpert, and places a frosty mug of Old Milwaukee in front of him. "Beer now, on the house," my brother quips. Of course, everything is on the house at Dave's Place, everything on the menu a prop, where everyone can Be. Here. Now. . . And finally, be at peace in every moment.

April 8, 2020: My brother David called early this morning, for our annual Passover greetings. Dave, as visitors to this space know, left the planet back in 2007 from glioblastoma at age 54, and opened his yearned for cafe, Dave's Place, the first place to go to get the hang of the afterlife. John Prine showed up this morning, and ordered a Bud. My brother recognized him and asked, "how you doin', John?" And Prine replied: "Pretty good. Not bad. Can't complain." John may not be of the Jewish persuasion, but he's invited to the Seder tonight at Dave's Place. It draws a big crowd every year: wine, matzah, morer, and all the rest, plus brisket, and shots of slivovitz, for six million. "I just open up the back room, set up a few extra tables, no big deal," my brother said. The singalong of "Dayenu" is led by Jerry Garcia and Joey Ramone, who have become good pals, who then do a long set with their jam band, Knish. The improvs get so crazy that the set can go on for a week with just one of the songs they play: Jim Carroll's "People Who Died." Tonight's band might include Walter Becker, Ginger Baker, Bill Withers, Ellis Marsalis, and maybe Hal Willner if he catches the right cloud at 59th Street. By the way, David asks what's going on in Corona, the part of Queens where our father grew up. New arrivals keep talking about Corona. Coronavirus. I tell him I'll fill him in next time.

Our father, Martin Robins, died on August 2, 2020, in South Florida. He was 96, and had been in good health, with a keen mind, until he got sick a week before passing. David had a frosty chilled bottle of a rare, small batch super premium Stolichnaya waiting for Marty. Typically, our dad said, “don’t you have something less fancy, like Popov? A Smiroff would be just fine.”