A Box of Kleenex
My sisters and I have an unusual family trait. We remember events by what clothes we were wearing at the time. On the day my brother Dan’s doctor at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston told me that Dan would not likely recover from the liver disease he was battling, I was wearing a short dungaree skirt, a white tee shirt and a matching dungaree jacket. My hair was pinned up, and I had my favorite leather sandals on.
The doctor, who was wearing a white lab coat, spoke in an English accent, which gave his announcement a sense of formality and made the distance between his reality and mine seem more dramatic. A woman was with him, also in a white lab coat, holding a box of tissue. We were in the Intensive Care Unit, next to Dan’s room, and nurses in green scrub suits were walking by us.
I was trying to figure out where I could go to get away from what he was telling me. I wondered why he hadn’t taken me to a private room to tell me such devastating news. Dan only had a 2% chance of living. They weren’t going to perform liver transplant surgery with those odds, he said. The words 2% were the equivalent of a death sentence, but he spoke them as though he were giving me the fat content of a carton of milk.
If I was home I would have gone to my bedroom, shut the door and thrown myself on my bed. I wanted to hide my face in a pillow, but it seemed that the doctor and the woman with him were waiting for me to ask questions. They both stood silent, looking at me. I didn’t know how I was still standing because my legs felt like they were made of weak cardboard. I felt like I was holding up a body that I had ceased to inhabit. “Is that all you have to offer me, a box of Kleenex?” I was thinking. She held it out towards me like a box of candy, but I felt sick. How could Dan be too well to be transplant priority one week and then too sick to withstand the surgery the next, I was thinking.
I wanted to run, but I didn’t know where to go. Eventually, I found myself in one of the hospital bathroom stalls, where I locked the door and cried. I felt like a teenager back in high school when a bathroom stall was the only place we could get any privacy. We would go there if we had bad menstrual cramps, or to sneak a few puffs of a cigarette. But the innocence of those days was lost to me now.
The weight of what the doctor had told me was too heavy for me to bear alone. I was the only family member in Houston with Dan at the time. I thought about the phone calls I would have to make to the rest of my family. I worried about how I would get back to Dan’s apartment that night. Driving in Houston traffic terrified me, and I had no confidence in anything now.
Dan didn’t have the luxury of time, and so neither did I. I didn’t stay in the bathroom for long. I fumbled as I called my sister Kathy on a hospital phone, telling her that she had to come to Houston immediately because I needed her.
Once I knew that what I said to Kathy had sunk in and that she was on her way, we said goodbye and I hung up the phone. It was clear what to do next, the only thing I could, the thing I had done for a week before and would do for one week more: sit by my brother Danny in his hospital bed and just be there.
Post Notes: These are the countdown weeks leading to the anniversary of my brother Danny’s death 5 years ago. I recently came across the above as a sketched draft meant for “The Jim and Dan Stories.” Touching into the nerve that is exposed this time of year, I was able to finally finish it. The photo is a page from one of my collage journals (a photo of Dan is on the second page in the right hand corner). To read more about the summer my family lost Dan, and our brother Jim a month before, go to my website HERE, or click on the Loose Leaf category sidebar “Losing a Loved One.“
August 18th, 2006 11:33 am
Ok, I have been waiting for this all week, since you told me you were working on it. Here I am crying….and thinking of my sister. She never woke up from the accident.
I also just ordered your book. FINALLY!
Thanks so much for sharing. I think it is so important to share our stories of grief, death and life.
{{{HUGS}}}
August 18th, 2006 11:54 am
luckily…or not….i AM alone as i read this post and tap right into this vein of grief so close to the veil
of our moment to moment perception. I didn’t pause long with the tears either…
as i have the luxury/distraction of writing a response….
the intensity of the mourning bleeds back to the other side of the veil.
it brews and broods along with my father’s presence also lurking so near us now.
at least we’re not as alone as the grief makes us feel when it takes ahold
and disorients us from our conditioned perceptual realities…
see ya and touch you soon. Colleen Realwoman
August 18th, 2006 12:13 pm
What poignant writing. It’s easy for the reader to feel the emotional distress you were experiencing. May all your wonderful memories of Dan bring you comfort in the week ahead.
August 18th, 2006 1:18 pm
…the luxury of time… your words are larger than life.
August 18th, 2006 8:04 pm
Through tears I say:
I am so glad I was able to be there for you Col…and our beautiful brother Dan.
Just when I think I’m okay again – I read something like this…but I thank you for saying it so poignantly. Your love shines through.
I’m glad you were there for me too.
I love you.
August 18th, 2006 8:36 pm
Hi Coll, I’m glad you and Kath were there for Dan and for eachother. I can’t even beleive we lived through this and only 33 days after Jimmy. Man….oh…..Man. (This is something Danny would say) Love you, Trishxo
August 18th, 2006 10:45 pm
A bonus chapter to your wonderful book, Colleen. I appreciate your honest and generous account of your experience and your family’s.
August 19th, 2006 6:40 am
So beautifully written this, Colleen…To share these feelings here is a great gift to all of us…Thank you for that…
August 19th, 2006 7:36 am
I remember reading your book last year and I was thinking how hard it was for you to contact the family that day. My baby sister had to do this when my middle sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was thinking about how hard it was for her also.
August 19th, 2006 8:11 am
Any comment I could make seems superfluous, at best. But I wanted you to know, you touched me. And you’ve taught me a thing or two with your Dan and Jim stories, too. What a gift.
August 19th, 2006 8:50 am
a heartbreaking, yet beautifully honest and as rick said generous piece. ugh. may your wonderful memories and closeness with friends and family be a comfort in this sad time.
hugs sweetness.
August 19th, 2006 9:55 am
What exquisite writing…I feel for you as you near this anniversary that affects you so.
I don’t even like the way the funeral homes set out those boxes of tissue. When you have to go early and you see them placing them in chairs along the front…it struck me as calculated. Like they were expecting something from me or others, that human emotion was just a job for them….that they somehow lessen grief. I can’t explain it but I felt it when you wrote of the lady holding the tissues, waiting for you to need them.
August 20th, 2006 6:49 pm
Stunningly, devastatingly written.
March 15th, 2010 4:31 pm
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