Fly Fishing with Jesus

My brother isn’t dead.

My Irish twin should be 61 today. 

He’s not. 

Apparently, he’s fly fishing with Jesus.
According to our mom.

He was forty-nine at the time a syringe pricked his vein and deployed hard drugs into his broken heart.

I miss him.

He knew the reaper at the death bar by name. His cocktail began stirring precisely at two, shortly after his father’s right hand produced a red print upon the toddler’s left cheek, reaper knew what to do and emptied the first jigger.

A thick strap of leather slid from belt loops pulled together and snapped into velvet boy skin, collecting bitters at three, feeding the reaper’s glee.

He tried reading around seven, but fell to the back of the class off a mountain of words, letters and sentences seen in reverse. Reaper swept the offcuts of his stiff jeans into plastic Ziplocs. 

The Cub Scouts sought Boeing dad’s for the Pinewood Derby race, but his was a mom for whom the assembly of wheels and wood produced a slow moving vehicle and tears on the track. The reaper retrieved each garnish.

Rock hard square knuckles dropped pinches of dried blood over ice to the reaper’s delight as a teen. He mixed the ashes of joints and Camels into his cocktail stew. 

What if he’d never smoked dope on the snowy slope of Alpental or been summoned to the Principal for daily Ritalin?

I wonder.

What if the basketball his athletic father shoved down his throat had cleared the rim instead?

I wonder.

I miss his stunning blue eyes unlike any I’ve seen and the infectious laugh can still make me grin.

When I panicked about leaving a city I’d known most my life, long after he died, I was scared and truly alone. He suddenly appeared on the black vinyl bench of the large idling truck and said, “Turn right.” 

So, you see? The familiar reaper could never claim to be his keeper.

My brother’s not really dead, not to me.

I spoke with our mom and she said, he’s out fly fishing with Jesus instead.

©️2025 Lisa Blume. All rights reserved.

Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash