My Brother John’s Peanut Butter Sandwiches

I made 110 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with my friend, Christina, today. Another volunteer slipped each sandwich in a plastic bag and stacked it in the box with all the others. I learned that I am a very fast maker of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and it is primarily because I am very generous with the peanut butter and inexact with the application of jelly. Christina makes sure the jelly evenly reaches all the edges of the bread. I had a kid like that once. It took him thirty minutes to put jam on a piece of toast.

Repetitive motion gives way to repetitive thought. So, each time I spread a mound of peanut butter on a piece of white bread, I thought, “John would put more on.” My brother, John, would plaster a half-inch layer of peanut butter in the sandwiches he made for me. Then he’d stand and watch me eat, not letting me out of the house to play or go to the movies or run to my friend’s house to sleep over until I’d swallowed every last bit.

Over the years, on the rare occasions when we saw each other, we’d joke about the peanut butter sandwiches. It was our standing joke. But both of us knew that the peanut butter sandwiches – no jelly, no jam – were emblematic of our relationship. He was my big brother. He always did what he thought was best for me whether I liked it or not. He kept me out of traffic, my whole little girl’s life.

When he was very old and declining rapidly, I went to visit him. He was in his home, on oxygen, and pretty much stuck in a hospital bed set up in his living room so he could watch and re-watch all the episodes of Gunsmoke. We hadn’t spoken in years, all our communication was through his children. That’s how I knew he was sick. That’s how I knew he wouldn’t last long. That’s how I knew to get on a plane and go.

When the new nurse came, I stood up to greet her. “This is my sister, Janice,” he said. He raised himself up on his bird thin elbows and nodded toward me. “I used to make her peanut butter sandwiches.” The nurse nodded, as if this was part of the randomness that can be a very old person who is disintegrating. But he had told her all she needed to know about our relationship.

So, I thought this thought with each sandwich today. How John would have put on another layer of peanut butter, how he would skip the jelly, how he would never slice the sandwich in half, how he would hand it to me like a brick of food, fold his arms and tap his foot while I choked down each bite. I thought of looking up from what I was doing and telling my friend about my brother and the peanut butter sandwiches but it was, I guess, too precious to share.