This is the last entry on this subject, I promise.

But Scott deserved his own.

My brother, Scott Cunningham, made a name for himself writing about Wicca and how it is okay to practice by yourself. That you don't need a coven to be a follower, that you can initiate yourself. "Wicca - A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner" put him on the map. Several other books by him came out in the 80s and 90s, and to my shame I didn't read any of them until after his death in 1993. His books are still out there, still selling. I can only hope to do as well when I publish.

But the guy I want to talk about was the kid I grew up with, the one who introduced me to the concept of body odor, the one who I rambled the Laguna Mountains with. Intense, bespectacled, smart but not loving school, my brother was always creative, always dabbling in something as we grew up, and always ready to beat the snot out of me at chess, or canasta, or any other game I dared to play with him.

After our first foray to Disneyland in 1965 I believe, he came home and made the fjords from Its a Small World. Then he made the Pirate's treasure cave, with jewels garnered from a local craft shop. He collected sea shells and odd bits of knowledge that the rest of us just kind of gaped at.

When we were in Forest Grove over his birthday one year, my grandmother Hazel made him a cake covered with marzipan shells - she learned how to deal with marzipan to make him happy. The cake looked like a beach at low tide (and tasted FABULOUS!). I think - I hope - my dad still has a picture of Scott with that cake, face sunburned, eyes so happy and a grin that went from ear to ear.

He taught me how to meditate, how to make wax pictures by dripping different colored candles into a bowl of water, and how divination can work. I was all of 13 at the time, so most of it went over my head, but it was at least something that brought us together.

I don't know when he contracted AIDS, but I do know that the last ten years or so of his life he had been celibate. He was diagnosed in March of 1990, at Mass General, while he was on a book signing tour. I was three months pregnant with my firstborn.

We had a last meal together in January of 1993. I don't remember the restaurant, but I remember him gripping my arm and me murmuring to him, okay, three steps up then a slight ramp down...his vision had gotten very bad. He was living at my parents' house by this time, and we knew he was not getting any better.

A month later and he was in hospice - when I visited him there, his eyesight had gone. I rubbed sandalwood lotion into his hands and arms and feet. His face was gaunt, dark, his blind eyes sunken into his skull, and he clutched a big stuffed bear that Grandma Hazel had made. Hospice was awful and I cried hard when we walked out of that place that smelled of urine and where patients cried out in agony.

He came home to my old bedroom to die. My dad couldn't make an omelet fluffy enough for him, but dad did everything else for him that he possibly could after being instructed by the home nurse.

When Scott died, I was three months pregnant with my second son. I still feel cheated that he's gone, and I know many other people feel that way.

My parents didn't have a memorial ceremony for him, which I think was too bad; but they went to one held by his Wiccan friends. They didn't tell me about that, not sure how I'd feel about it, I suppose.

I miss him, every day. So many people have been touched by his work, and I treasure everyone who contacts me because of him. He was different, vitally so, and beloved.

Peace to you, my brother. Peace.