A CALL TO BILL

It's a Tuesday evening in late April 2010. There's a gentle rain falling outside. I just came back from visiting my mom who came home from the hospital yesterday, after knee replacement surgery last week. As I sit here trying to write this essay, I find myself thinking that this would be a perfect night to call my brother.

Unfortunately, that's not possible since he passed away four years ago. But, typically I would call him on a night like this since there is nothing "big" going on - just a bunch of small things that would probably trigger a four hour cross-country conversation (he lived in Los Angeles). It always amazed me how we could stretch nothing into so many hours. And, on frequent occasions I would call back within five minutes because there was something I forgot to say or some part of our conversation that I found a need to expand on. And, another 45 minutes to an hour would pass.

Tonight I think we would have spoken about the volcanic ash in the skies over Europe, the FDA call for salt reduction for the food industry, the Tea Party and the bastards at Goldman Sachs. Oh, yeah, Goldman Sachs would have been a big part of the conversation. They had been in previous conversations along with the entire financial industry, since my days as a stockbroker. Even when I was part of the industry I was critical of the games some firms (now called banks?) played. The changes from the Reagan years triggered the downhill spiral. And the mention of Reagan would have taken the conversation to another level.

Eventually we would have gotten to the topic of music. I think he would have been intrigued by the project I am currently working on - building a jukebox on a computer. I would have told him about the new Jimi Hendrix and the new Peter Wolf CDs (get them). I also would have mentioned the new Bruce Springsteen video coming out in June. Finally, we would have touched on the Rolling Stones expanded version of Exile On Mainstreet, which will be released this year. Even though he loved the Stones, I can hear him say, "if there are pennies left on the streets of America, the Stones will be releasing material and touring."

As you can probably tell, I loved my brother and miss him constantly. I have decided that when I don't have a specific topic to write about I will write about a conversation with him and call these essays "A Call To Bill". I checked when I started writing this evening and I found that tomorrow will mark four years since we laid him to rest. In so many ways, my life will never be the same. It was like the end of the innocence. And, certainly the end of my calls to Bill.