A story about "premeditated love"

I was wearing a really interesting necklace at the loft party tonight. It's long and was mostly hidden by my shirt, but I was keenly aware of wearing it.

I have been given necklaces before. In fact, of the dozen I own, I've only bought two. All the others were gifts. From XGF. From my cousin. From The Redhead. Etc.

The one I wore on Saturday night was also a gift, but it is an extra-special one. I can look at the string of fresh-water pearls XGF brought me back from Hong Kong last year and think, How nice. XGF brought me back so much stuff from that trip, but these little pearls are the sweetest of all. When I wear the Nevada-shaped pendant my glass-artist cousin gave me last year, I get a lot of compliments. When people remark on some tortoise-shell beads, I say, I bought this at a street fair to replace the sentimental necklace I brought back from the Amazon but lost when it broke and fell of my neck.

But this necklace I was wearing on Saturday night? It is one of the most touching gifts I have ever received. After the party died down to just four of us, one friend asked about it. I explained its origin thusly:

Last week, S2 came over for a little socializing. While looking through a jewelry box for some old political buttons -- and rockstar memorabilia -- I stumbled upon three stones. I think they're amethysts.

My youngest brother, Jason, learned to tumble stones from my grandfather. When he was about 12 years old, he polished these three amethysts and gave them to me as a gift. I think the pendant was on a chain at one point, but the small rocks that might have otherwise been earings weren't attached to anything. They've been in my jewlery box for nearly 20 years.

I didn't remember they were in there, so when I pulled them out in the process of looking for something else, I was surprised. I showed them to S2, and I recall her saying, "You should wear these."

I told her, I don't know what I would do with them.

On Friday night, she came over to bring me some serving platters for the party. She asked whether I would like my housewarming gift then or on Saturday night, and I told her it didn't matter. "Well," she replied, "I'm in a bit of a spot because I think it *might* matter. I stole something from you, and I need to return it, and I wasn't sure how you'd feel about it."

You *stole* something from me? I asked. I was confused, a bit aghast and intrigued all at once.

She reached into her purse, pulled out a small box with a purple bow and slid it across the table to me. Her brows were knit with apprehension.

I opened the box and found myself staring at a necklace made of many different stones and glass beads. Immediately, the amethysts popped out at me. The pendant was the centerpiece, the earings set off to its side a few beads away.

I lost all my words and simply stared at it.

See, here's the thing. Jason died five years ago this month. I wish my heart was bigger than it is; I wish that I would've had a loving bond with someone else in my life where this wouldn't be the case, but the truth is *still* that there has never been anyone in my life I've loved more than my youngest brother. I was 7 years old when he was born, and the day he came home from the hospital, I pretty much decided he was mine.

It also turns out that my mother was utterly negligent. I think she was suffering from postpartum depression or something, because she did not always provide the care he needed, and that task was left to me and my sister, who is 14 months older than me. I learned at 7 to change his diapers, to feed him, to rock him to sleep. He had clubbed feet when he was born, requiring surgery and casts. I pushed him around in his stroller all the time and felt a deep pity for his casted feet.

Growing up in my family was a matter of learning how to fight -- physically, verbally and strategically. It was, in many respects, like pages out of "Lord of the Flies." My sister and I fought like wet cats in a sack. My oldest brother seemed hell-bent on getting me in as much trouble as he could manage to lie about, and I hated him for it.

But Jason: There was none of that with Jason. Perhaps it was his position as the baby of the family that gave him some kind of special status. Or it was the tremendous sense of responsbility my sister and I felt for him. But he never got involved in the madness. He learned "tuck, duck and cover" pretty early on and seemed to use that, and a bit of comical genius, to survive in our insane environment. (Nature via Nurture, indeed!)

Amidst all the insanity of my youth, Jason was the one ally upon whom I could rely. He and I were cut from the same stone, if you will. There has never been anyone else so much like me. In watching him die -- slowly, over four years, suffering from a Terri Schiavo-like brain injury -- I felt keenly my own mortality.

I was the only one of my siblings who could look him in the face as he withered up there in the nursing home. The only one in the family who knew the music he liked (The Eagles, The Grateful Dead, Pink Flloyd) and played it for him. The only one among us who was willing to whisper into his ear, It's OK to go. You don't need to stay here like this. As if he could understand....

He couldn't. He was a vegetable. The outrageous, highly intelligent comedian who personified for me joie de vivre spent the last years of his life in the most miserable of human existences.

There are a lot of complicating family factors to this situation. I can't even begin to get into them. But it boils down to this: I have perhaps five pictures of him, the oldest of which he's in sixth grade. I have videotape of him in the nursing home. I have the teddy bear I sent to him when he was in the ICU, before he suffered the brain injury. I have little more than a tablespoon of his ashes.

And I have four polished rocks.

S2 took three of them and strung them on a beautiful necklace of her own creation. This is what I saw in the box she gave me on Friday night.

When I finally regained my words, I said, This is weird. Then, growing a bit more articulate, I said, This is *really* weird.

S2 continued to look apprehensive. "I hope I haven't overstepped my bounds. I hope I haven't offended you. If you don't like what I've done, you don't have to wear it. I can take them off. I can make you a different necklace. Whatever you want."

Finally, I added, It's as if *three* people are brought together here. There's Jason. There's my grandfather, who was very important to me. And there's you, S2.

I guess that it's really FOUR people, because when I put on the necklace, I have all three of them with me.

I told an abbreviated form of this story (minus the family drama and the context) to the stragglers at my party, the three people who stuck around to drink a little more wine, have a shot of port and hear me play the cello. (S2 and her lovely hubby had taken off a while before to relieve the babysitter.) One of the women who heard this story clutched her hand to her chest and said, "You do know that woman *really* loves you, don't you? That decision to 'steal' the rocks was ... well, that was something in the moment, but it was also premeditated love. That is the purest form of love." (I dig foreigners. They are often so much more poetic with their English than the rest of us are.)

Bubba said, simply, "That is so touching, it makes me want to cry. And when I think of what a *crappy* day you were having yesterday, I can't imagine a better way for your evening to end. That is just so *perfect*."

Really.

S2, I still look at that necklace and find myself incapable of saying Thank you in any way that feels adequate. What can I say? It's beautiful. And the thought behind it is ... well, I'm speechless.