Apr. 21, 1951 – Oct. 14, 2018

Memory is mysterious; a repository of images that reflect us as much as they do what is remembered. In our memory, those we’ve loved and lost are as they were at particular moments in our lives. For me, the Mark my mind keeps returning to in these melancholy days is the boy who wrote me a letter one November day when neither of us had any past to speak of and the future was a long string of tomorrows.

It was the autumn I went away to college, and Mark had begun the seventh grade in his new school. Our family had moved across town, from South Street to Witherspoon Drive, and my little brother and I both were meeting new people, making new friends, enlarging our sense of self.

In his letter, Mark wrote of two brothers in his class who were twins and really funny. They were the new classmates he liked best. Their names were Rob and Steve. I recognized their last name – Watt – because I knew the Springfield drug store of the same name. And he told me he was going out for the school basketball team, something I too had done – with little success – when I was the same age. Tryouts had begun that week.

His letter expressed not only optimism but an assurance I would come to see as characteristic of Mark. “I hope I make the team,” he said. “Some of the players were on the team last year, and they’re pretty good.” Then he said, “If I don’t make it this year, I know I’ll make it next year!” I don’t remember if he did or did not make the team, and within a few years it could not have mattered to him. But it did in that moment, and his simple words have stayed with me, for reasons I cannot say. By itself, it’s an insignificant thing to remember, a little brother’s letter, saying the things a little brother might say.

Maybe I remember his words, and keep returning to them in my dark hours, because they evoked not merely hope but confidence in the future. Today is a good day, they seemed to say, and tomorrow will be a better one. To replay them in my mind now, at the approach of winter, is to relive that springtime of our lives, when the sun shines brighter, the days grow longer and summer is forever.

Submitted by his brother, Michael Skube