My brother, Brad Hare, died this week from an apparent suicide. The news came like a ghost as my phone rang early in the morning as he had no contact with his family for the last 18 years. Depression clearly wracked his last years on this earth, but he made his passage slowly for reasons he never told us.
Though the grieving process started years ago, it is only fitting that I have some kind of wake. We are Celts, after all, a people who have raised suffering and depression to such an art form that we always find a way to celebrate it. This is an occasion to relate a few stories from our childhood together south of Miami in a world where craziness crackled through the air and condensed around us as reliably as a 3PM thunderstorm every languid summer day. It made us who we are, and in the end we are all nothing but stories like these.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 