Above: the last sunrise I’ll most likely ever see in my mom’s La Jolla apartment. That’s the full moon.

Last week, Tracie, the girls, and I traveled to La Jolla for family vacation. I spent the better part of the week sorting through my mom’s apartment and shipping precious photography and other documents back to Texas where I plan to build an archive for her.

We had planned to gather as a family in La Jolla, earlier in the month, the first weekend in December, although without our daughters — just me and Tra, my brothers and their wives. The mission was to dig through the apartment, leaf through hand-written memories people had shared at the memorial, spend a day, maybe a meal together, reminiscing.

Some days before our trip, brother Micah called to say that he unexpectedly wouldn’t be there that weekend. He was traveling outside San Diego for a soccer game. He would sort through the things on his own and inform us as to what he was taking.

That wasn’t what we planned, I protested.

It was a complicated weekend for us but we had figured it out. A Herculean effort, with a bar mitzvah, an audition, and a friend’s recital for the girls to attend. I turned down a juicy gig with my band. Tra put clients on hold. Her parents cancelled their participation in a credit union board event (Randy’s mayor of West Orange).

Micah, how could you do this?, I pleaded. This is really messing us up.

I have to do what I have to do for my mental health, he said.

A soccer game?

We rescheduled for our winter break. Not only did he not meet me. He didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me that he was punking me again — a pattern through our lives. No call, no show.

Thing is, his soccer team lost and there was no match that first weekend of December. It was all just a game he was playing.

How can he dishonor the memory of our mother like this?

Some years ago he changed the name of his museum from the Museum of Man to the Museum of Us. I applauded at the time.

Seems his next project is Museum of Me.

.דאָס איז אַ שאַנדע און אַ חרפּה