My dad’s childhood friend built a house in West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard. My family stayed in the house every July until my Uncle Mike died at the age of 39. It was July 2nd, 2005. Pink Floyd was playing their final set at London’s Hyde Park for the Live8 concert series when we got the phone call. I was thirteen and he was the first in my extended family to die. He was my godfather. We were young, they told us it was a heart attack.

Seven summers later, we went back to Martha’s Vineyard. We hadn’t stayed in the house since that July. There was an overwhelming familiarity when we got to the house, though everything seemed smaller. Nothing in the bedroom I slept in had changed and I remembered the secret entrance to the roof deck immediately. I spent every night of that visit up there with either the whole family or just Jimmy.

We went back around the time when I started to fear that my brother was starting to become like my uncle. Mikey was his role model and he wanted to be as big and strong and good at guitar as he was. I remember his live performances in the living room – he promised to give Jimmy guitar lessons. Two weeks before he died, he said to me, Tori, and Shawna – “I want you to play Dido’s “White Flag” at my funeral.” We did.

The days after the death went by so quickly. I still remember that it happened Saturday and the funeral was on Thursday. My entire extended family lives within a three-town radius from each other so we were together every day for a while after. The wake was in the center of town at a building we knew well but had never been in; the funeral home next to the ice cream shop. I had never seen a dead body before. He was wearing what I had last seen him in – his blue sweater with the gray stripe. I think he was wearing the baseball hat with the bass fish pin too. He was my godfather and my uncle. He was Shawna and Ryan’s dad. He was my dad’s baby brother. I still remember the way his face looked.
 

Amber marigolds
My twilight dreams
Menemsha sunsets
Eyelids too
Heavy moon tides drift
To see the sea

The moon is a rabbit tonight
Rings of yellow and blue
Dance around her face
Suede shoes and your warm
Summer toes
Tap and look up

Windowpane paint chips
And salty sun stained skin
The furnace burns red
In the winter
Robin makes her nest on the back porch
Where you air out old shoes
Sometimes they are caught in the rain
But you don’t really care

Silver moonrise hidden
Tops of trees wave
Crashing on the beach
Oh my mind

July 2, 2012