A long time ago, a young married couple wanted badly to have a child. After about five years, several doctors told the woman that she would never give birth. There weren’t all the tests and IVF and stuff we have now, and I don’t know what reason they gave her. But the couple decided they would have a child -they would adopt one.
After all the red tape, interviews, screening, social worker inspections and all that jazz, they brought home a blonde haired, blue eyed baby girl. Her adoption was finalized two months to the day after her birth.
And so, just a few weeks later, my mom found out she was pregnant. People say “that happens all the time”. Actually no, it does not. After talking with several physicians while doing the fertility tango myself, it’s pretty rare. It’s just that when it happens, people do hear about it. And,10 months and 3 days after I was born, I had myself a baby brother!
My parents were elated and apparently so was I. I welcomed the newcomer enthusiastically. I can remember when I was about two years old, trying to pick him up but Mom wouldn’t let me, in fear that I would hurt my back. He fell out of his highchair once, and I screamed bloody murder, afraid that “my” baby was hurt.
I was a year ahead of him in school but we were together when we weren’t in class. On the playground and the bus, bullies learned quickly not to mess with either of us, because it would mean having to fight off both of us.
His dream was to go to UNC-Chapel Hill and play basketball. He reached his adult height of 6’5 at about age 15. I had reached mine at age 14, I was 5’8 before spinal damage and aging. We had a lot of fun playing in the driveway cutout where we had a hoop, But when he was about 14, he contracted a serious kidney disease and was bedridden for about a month. I brought him his assignments (there was no online tutoring then, of course), and tutored him in everything until he was able to return to school. But his first dream was shattered with that illness — he could maybe play on a church team, but that was all. No JV, no Varsity, and certainly no college ball. One good blow to the kidney could kill him. My heart broke for him. But he never cried, never complained.
At one time after I was grown, my mother said, “You know, I really wasn’t prepared for your brother”. When I asked why not, she said, “You were such a good baby, and he was,...not”. Well those roles changed early, he was the golden child and I was the black sheep.
I spent the last two years of HS at a boarding school away in the mountains after being cordially invited NOT to return to public school after my sophomore year. Due to an as yet undiagnosed and ignored mental illness, I was labeled a “behavior problem”. I just wouldn’t “act right”. The last place I needed to be was away from my family, but I was just too much trouble for my mother at that point.
Some of my best memories are of making music with my brother, him on guitar, me on piano. So much love and happiness,
Fast forward to my senior year. A few days before I was to return home to sit for AP exams for college, my mom called to tell me my brother had been in an accident on his way to prom. His girlfriend was OK, a few scratches, he had thrown himself over her. He went through the windshield, over the hood, and into a ditch. He ended up in the hospital with a slight head injury, We all had long hair then but they had to shave his head to sew it up. I took my exams, stayed with him as long as I could, and returned to school to play my senior recital and graduate. I sprained my ankle badly two days before, (when my mother had a hissy fit I told her not to worry; it wasn’t my pedal foot!). My brother didn’t want to come because he was afraid everyone would laugh at his bald head. I told him not to be stupid, that my friends had been worried sick and that he needed to come so they could see he was OK.
So I went off to UNC-G and he graduated a year later and was gone to Chapel Hill. He majored in Accounting, while I majored in drinking and partying and changing my major more than I changed my underwear. He graduated with a Bachelor’s in Accounting and I didn’t graduate at all. During those years, we visited back and forth a lot, and were able to spend a lot of time together.
He married straight out of college, to a girl his high school girlfriend had introduced him to after they broke up. They had the most beautiful baby girl I have ever seen, and to this day she is the daughter I never had. They split up when she was very young,
During this time he developed anorexia. It’s rare in males but he had the personality type for it. He used to take me out to dinner and wanted me to tell our mother that he had eaten all his food. (He did when he was with me, he wouldn’t ask me to lie for him). I told him that while I loved spending the time with him, that I was NOT the food police, but I did know for a fact that if he didn’t start eating, our mom and his doctor would collaborate to hospitalize him.
He eventually recovered but still ran. He was an avid runner, not a weekend jogger, more like 5-6 miles a day. One day he was hit by a car that swerved off the road, and to this day I have no idea how they got away with it (it was an elderly couple), but they did. He was broken neck to toe. Broken neck, broken ribs, punctured lung, pelvis split in two, right knee=eggshell, and right femoral artery shredded, requiring a bypass graft. The medics said he stayed awake long enough to tell them his name and that he had Blue Cross, then he passed out. He was in surgery for 12 hours.
When he came to, he was in traction, had one of those halo things on his head, and his pelvis had been bolted back together with this weird thing around it. But every time someone came into his room he would talk about current things, just to let us know his brain was fine and not injured this time. That was in January of 1989. I would show up in a red NC State sweatshirt just to piss him off and give him the urge to get out of the bed. Also because I’m evil that way.
I remember a time, we must have been around twelve and thirteen, I went into his room, sat down and asked him if he ever felt “differently” about me, or felt that I was any less his sister because I was adopted, He smiled and said, “I never thought about it. You were here first”. Then he hugged me and I was laughing. It was such an honest, logical thing to say.
By 1997 I was doing temp work, and with my current (and last) husband. My brother was a vice-president of the hardware company our grandpa had founded, and from which our mom had retired years before. The night after Thanksgiving, he and his second wife and their young daughter, and her little friend, were returning home after seeing a movie. He was making a left turn into his driveway when the speeding drunk driver crested the hill a ways back behind them, and figured if he stomped on it he could pass my brother’s car. On the left.
I still have pictures of that car but I haven’t looked at them in a very long time. Fortunately the little girls were both OK physically, and my sister-in-law escaped with a broken collarbone (which I attribute to the force of the airbag). My brother was not so lucky. He was taken to our Level 1 Trauma Canter with a TBI. He was in a coma for weeks and what it would be like if/when he came out of it was a mystery.
When he finally did awaken, it was...I still have no words. He had no short-term memory, and just a little long term. He knew who we all were but not much of anything else. He was in rehab for weeks.
My parents had sold their and our grandparents’ houses in the country but still owned most of the land. There was a pond and a barn, and a single wide house trailer that we had always used for picnics, family parties, and my grandparents had used it as a guesthouse. My parents had moved to an apartment in independent living at a seniors community. They tried to get him in over there but they had an age limit of 55. My brother was only 42. So my dad moved with him into the trailer, and he was able to spend the weekends with my parents in their apartment.
This was after his second wife divorced him (if you’re guessing the gravy train de-railed, you would be correct), and my mom was appointed his guardian. He had a black Lab he loved, named Rambo, and they put up a fence for a dog run so he could have his dog out there. He still had his sense of humor, never lost it in all that jumble in his head. One day I was at their apartment and our aunt returned with him; she had taken him to visit the dog, My mom always acted like she didn’t like the dog, and my brother would say, “You love Rambo. And Rambo loves you”. So this time, he came in the door, hobbled over to my mom and said, “Rambo said to give you this” and he leaned over and licked her face! I like to died laughing. (Yes, I’m southern).
Time went by and brains do atrophy. He lost even more memory and had seizures. In early 2001, my dad had a massive stroke and never regained consciousness. He died a week later, My brother went to live in an Assisted Living facility. For as long as she was able, my mom took him to doctor appointments and most everywhere he had or wanted to go. I took over when I was able and not working, He and I had a favorite fish house so we went there often. Usually a sweet, generous person, he would,not.give.me just ONE of his precious fried oysters. If I tried to swipe one from his plate I would end up with a fork in the back of my hand so I finally gave it up,.
He got injuries from his seizures. His daughter and my mom were on a first name basis with some of the ED folks in those days. When my mom was no longer able to drive or take care of her own stuff, I took over that, and she transferred guardianship of my brother to his eldest daughter. A teacher in her late thirties at the time, raising two boys on her own, she somehow managed. She is the daughter I never had and I adore her. She is truly a good person.
My brother’s condition deteriorated over the years. When our dad died, he would call me 10 or more times a day, “Did Daddy die?” I would gently explain to him that yes, he had. One day after about the 8th call, my husband said, “I don’t know how you do that”. I said, “You do what you have to do”. He had loved his work so much and that was taken from him, too. Until the day he died he would ask his daughter or me “Am I going to work?” It’s amazing how I learned so well to keep a straight face while my heart was breaking.
The AL place where he lived had 2 (at least that I know of) cases of COVID19. After which they had the place totally cleaned, then restricted residents to their rooms. Quarantined. Their food and meds were brought to them. Last year my brother had had pneumonia, and had trouble swallowing. This had happened before, right after the accident, and at a few other times. So last year since that episode they had been thickening his liquids and watching him eat to make sure he was OK. This was easy when they were all eating in the dining room. But just dropping their food off,..
He did have several falls during the quarantine, and on Friday April 10 they sent him to the hospital in an ambulance. The hospital was on lockdown but he was presenting with pneumonia. He had no fever so they didn’t test him for the virus, and put him on a med-surg floor. During the day Saturday they got his speech therapist in there and she said that yes, he was aspirating because he couldn’t swallow properly. Then they decided to test him (smdh), and it wasn’t looking good. I talked to a very nice nurse who went to his room to get his permission to tell me everything, then she let me talk to him on the phone. Something told me that if I wanted to say anything to him, that was the time. I don’t know how I knew, I just did. I told him that I loved him more than he would ever know and that love was forever, He was still my baby brother.
Sunday he really got no better. My niece decided that lockdown or not, isolation or not, she was going in there. I have no idea how she finagled her way in there but she did. I told her I would come too and she pitched a fit, She said, “you are too damn high risk you are not getting NEAR this place!” By then they had moved him to the COVID ward even though the test result wasn’t back yet.
My niece was afraid of being exposed, but she was more upset at the thought of her dad dying alone, she took such good care of him all those years. They put protective gear on her, such as it was, and let her into his room. He had lost consciousness sometime before, but she talked to him. She put the phone to his ear so I could talk to him. He died around 10am Monday the 13th. His test came back negative later that day. Cause of death was aspiration pneumonia.
If you’re still here, thank you. My brother went through more in his life than anyone I’ve ever known, or that anyone should ever have to. But he never lost his love for life and other people, his sense of humor, or his faith. Somewhere in the book of Matthew (I am not good with chapter and verse) it says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” There has never been any doubt in my mind that he knows exactly what God looks like. He was the purest-hearted person I ever knew. I love you, baby brother.
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