Whitney Otto

In the fall of 2023 I was visiting my brother in Pasadena for ten days. I was supposed to be in Charleston at a family wedding but I needed to see my brother who had cancer (side note: I hate writing that he had cancer because it changes everything about the time we spent together during this visit; it makes him cancer and he wasn’t cancer, he was my different, funny brother who, up until now had been beating all the odds).

Though he was far from bedridden, we spent a lot of time in his bedroom, mostly watching the Dodgers make it to the World Series then spectacularly lose it all. (My brother had been a diehard Dodgers fan since childhood.) He was showing me objects in his very orderly room, and talking about his plans for future decorations, when he handed me a vintage sterling silver Tiffany & Co. letter opener with the initials ELD.

I admired the letter opener without asking about the initials which I didn’t recognize. This was not usual for me; I would’ve asked but I was so tired and sad and trying to keep all of that to myself that I simply handed it back to him.

He died six weeks later, and I came into possession of the letter opener which sits on my desk, a mystery and a testament to a story untold.