The Jim and Dan Stories Revisited: Chapter 2
The last few weeks of my brother’s lives played out like the conclusion of a dramatic Hollywood script, a plot with a twist. The road trip they took, two weeks before the first death, became the beginning of a larger journey, the one in which they would both leave this world.
I have decided to share my book, The Jim and Dan Stories, chapter by chapter, to have it available online, since it is no longer available in print. The book, which was used in a Radford University grief and loss class for counseling students, is part an account of my brothers last weeks and their deaths a month apart, part memoir of growing up together on the South Shore of Boston in a large Irish Catholic family of 11, and part a chronicle of coping with the first six months of life-altering grief. It is not dense reading, about 150 pages, broken up into short chapters made up of several short vignettes. I plan to post a chapter every Wednesday until the book is done. I added a new side bar category “Jim and Dan Stories” on the blog (to the right) for easy access and because some might want read it all in one sitting.
2.
A Black Cow in a Dark Night
Driving down Route 8 in the town of Floyd, going 50 miles an hour, I hit a cow. I was in my ’87 Honda with the license plate that says “Let it be.” That’s the name of the song we sang to Danny the morning of his death. For though we may be parted… there is still a chance that we will see….There will be an answer….Let it be. It was night and the cow was black. I never saw it coming, the way Jimmy never saw the machine part that pinned him against the wall until it was too late. The impact of the cow’s body shattered the windshield and dented the hood, but the car still ran. Sort of like breaking a leg and not like losing the function of a liver, like Dan did. I remember Dan’s liver doctor talking to me about using kidney dialysis to help Dan’s failing kidneys kick back. “It’s like putting new brakes in a car when you really need a new transmission. Don’t get your hopes up,” he said.
I wanted to pass right over the cow problem and continue on to my destination, but I had to wait for the State Police, get some phone numbers, and a new ride. The destination that I finally did reach was a celebration at The Pine Tavern for a group of friends who were all born in 1951 and who were turning, or had just turned, fifty. People there came up to me to offer insurance advice or to say, “I’m sorry about your accident, hitting the cow.” I guess not many knew I had just lost two brothers and that the cow was the least of my problems. This was my first big night out since my brother’s back-to-back deaths. I sat with a friend who I knew had recently lost her mother and who was able to be present for her mother’s last breath, as I was for Dan’s, feeling not so out of place with her. I was able to tell her that Danny was just about to turn 50 and would have if he had lived just one month more.
Later at home, I emailed my brothers and sisters the cow story, feeling sad at how shortened my family email list had become without Dan and Jim on it. I especially missed being able to tell Jim, who always got a kick out of oddball life stories.
Dan’s Birthday Present
Coming from a working class, Irish Catholic family of eleven, pets were not a priority, and so the majority of the Redman family were not avid pet lovers. Danny was an exception. We knew Dan loved his cat, Winslow, but we didn’t know how much until we lived in his Texas apartment (my mother, sister, sister-in-law and I) during his last weeks. Special cat brushes, gourmet cat food, and hordes of cat toys were everywhere. We took turns scooping the cat’s poop from the litter box into the toilet. We pet him, when he let us, to ease his loneliness for Dan. We brought a picture of Winslow for Dan’s hospital bulletin board and always included “Winslow News” (along with news of the Red Sox, who were losing ground right along with Dan) in our updates, when Dan was awake enough to listen. Even I was beginning to like Winslow.
After Danny died, arrangements were made for Winslow to stay with a friend of Dan’s until a family member could come back with a U-haul to close Dan’s apartment down. Eventually, Winslow made the trip from Houston to Boston, with a stopover in Virginia to spend the night hiding in my woodpile, ending up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he was lovingly adopted by my younger brother Bobby and his family.
Bobby’s wife, Jeanne, tells the rest of the story in an email message: “Winslow was fitting in quite nicely and seemed happy. On Saturday night he slept with me (a first). On Sunday he spent time on each person’s lap (another first). Sunday around 4:30 he suddenly ran out of the house (as if someone called him). We found him the next morning on October 7th–Danny’s birthday–dead. There were no visible injuries.”
Every day I walk to the mailbox and pass an empty can of cat food that was left in the driveway from when Winslow was here. I leave it there as a marker of all that has happened.
Two Brothers, Two Towers, Two Sons
Death is a season rather than a single date. I hadn’t been home from the last funeral for even a week when the terrorist attack on the U.S. took place–September 11, 2001. Two towers came down, one right after the other like my brothers did, killing over 3,000 innocent people. Now the whole country was in grief. Maybe I wouldn’t stick out so, like a sore thumb. I felt grateful that we had our brother’s bodies. We could say goodbye to their dead faces, touch their hair that still felt real. I even know where they are now. It’s a mystery to me why a vacant body is so important, but it is. I couldn’t imagine my brothers trapped under rubble, lost in pieces. I wonder if any of the families involved in the 9/11 devastation lost more than one loved one.
Grieving two brothers at the same time is awkward. Something about it reminds me of raising my two sons. My love and commitment for each is not a question, but I still try to be fair, not wanting one to feel slighted or to think I’m playing favorites. Now I’m crying for Dan…now for Jim…now for both. It’s hard to separate. Grief is a self-conscious process. It creates a thin veil between what is seen and what is unseen. I feel watched by Jimmy and Danny, just as I can imagine what they would be saying or doing now.
I miss talking to Dan about the recent world events. We were only one year apart in age and had similar interests and tastes. Dan and I could talk easily about sex, music, spirituality, or politics. I knew better than to talk to Jim about politics. He could blast me in one breath, “YOUR LOSING IT, COLLEEN. GET SOME REST!” and praise me in the next, “…I’m very proud to have a sister like you” (after reading something I had written). The September 11th attack was an oddball event of the greatest magnitude. Even Jimmy would be talking.
My sons were born in Texas. Danny followed me there in the late 70’s when he needed to turn over a new leaf. He always measured the length of his time in Texas by my son Josh’s birthday, 22 this year. Nineteen years ago he became my son Dylan’s Godfather. Unlike Jim, Dan had no kids of his own and was never married, but he was still a family man, as Jim was. Danny always made his nieces and nephews a priority in his life. It was fitting that my sons, along with Dan’s other nephews, lovingly carried his body during his funeral services, as Jim’s brothers carried his. It was fitting that Dan had three ministering women, more than some men with wives, at his death, and more young people crying at his funeral than some fathers might have.
The White Feather
It was a perfect white feather that must have just fallen, but it seemed to have been placed in my path just for me. I was walking on the beach in Hull, the beach that Jimmy so often took storm photographs of, trying to gather my strength for his funeral and thinking of the eulogy I was to give. I found myself picking up that feather to save in my pocket and then later putting it with Jim’s body when I said my last goodbye. For me, it represented other-world, freedom, and purity.
Weeks later, we were facing the worst with Dan in the hospital, an unlikely place for a white feather to show up, but it did. Jeanne pulled it out of her pocketbook (not knowing about the white feather I left with Jim’s body), saying her daughter had given it to her. We called ourselves “the three ministering Mary’s,” Jeanne, my sister Kathy, and myself, tending Danny at his deathbed, the way Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary and her cousin did for Jesus. That was when it occurred to me that death faced willingly, and especially after suffering, was a sort of sacrifice and a generator of grace. And didn’t Danny say “I’m all right” the first chance he got when the breathing tubes came off, the way Jesus said “Forgive them, Father,” comforting us when he was dying?
We anointed him with “Three Wise Men Oil” that my aroma-therapist sister, Kathy, had brought. We placed the white feather on his pillow next to the pin of Mother Mary that an anonymous late night visitor had left there. When I find myself in times of trouble… Mother Mary comes to me… speaking words of wisdom… Let it be. The nurse removed the breathing tubes when Dan signaled he was ready, like taking Jesus down from the cross he was nailed to. After he died, I placed the feather safely in my journal to keep in remembrance of his passing, but later, when I went to retrieve it, it was gone.
Family friends arranged for a funeral reception at the Hull Yacht club, which was a stone’s throw away from where the house we all grew up in used to be. My husband, Joe, took a picture of Jeanne, Kathy, and I at the bandstand gazebo on the lawn. On the way over to the bandstand Jeanne picked up a white feather and gave it to me.
“You better take good care of this one,” Joe said.
“No, this one can go where ever it wants to,” I answered. After holding it awhile, I passed it back to Jeanne who wore it as an earring.
Weeks later, when that picture was developed, I was shocked to read above our heads in bold letters “DAN S MEMORIAL.” My Massachusetts sisters and mom drove down to the yacht club to take a second look. It actually said “DAN SHORT’S MEMORIAL BANDSTAND,” but in our picture some of the words were cut off.
Thanksgiving
The leaves are falling as fast as the words in my head are spilling onto paper. A squirrel scampers by and a sense of urgency fills the air. I must get this all down. Tie this together. I must think harder to recover memories of Danny and Jim that I can lavish in. I have an impatience to do it all now. Death is a real motivating force. It teaches us that we don’t have forever. Understanding our own mortality is an opportunity, urging us to re-set priorities.
After seeing death close up, it’s hard to write shopping lists or want to sweep the floor. I want to keep writing checks to The Salvation Army with Dan’s name on them, keep pasting Jim’s weather pictures into colorful books. I want to meditate on death and be of service to others.
It’s almost Thanksgiving and my family will gather together at my brother Joey’s house in Hanover, Massachusetts. “Jimmy always brought the mashed potatoes,” Joey’s wife Nancy said with tears in her eyes when she and Joey passed through here with Winslow. Jimmy never missed a holiday gathering, a family birthday party, a basketball game his daughter was playing in, or any family event, which I know will make his absence on Thanksgiving even harder for my family to bear.
When Jimmy was visiting me in Virginia this past July, he talked about his machine shop job and even that metal milling machine, the one that would kill him (I should have been taking notes). He also talked light-heartedly about a lone wild turkey that would visit the bird feeder outside the shop where he worked. A wild turkey is a rare thing where Jim lived, and it was probably the first time he saw one. After Jim died, I was at his house looking through some photographs he had taken. I saw a close-up of a turkey at a bird feeder and knew it was the one! I looked up “turkey” in an animal totem book and learned that the turkey represents a give-away, a sacrifice, or a gift, to Native Americans. I couldn’t help but look at the turkey and see an omen in it, or at least a good totem for Jim.
A turkey would be a great totem for Jim for another reason. His birthday was November 22 and would sometimes fall on Thanksgiving, as it will this year. I remember as a girl “Jim’s birthday on Thanksgiving” was the only time I was not interested in cake, not after all the turkey and fixings! I was always confused back then about why his birthday wasn’t always on Thanksgiving.
The words are winding down (for now) as memories of past Thanksgivings drift through my mind. Like a favorite dream I am trying to reconstruct, I superimpose those memories over the harsh reality, which is this: There are empty chairs at the table this year, and never has emptiness been so concrete. – Colleen Redman
_________Read earlier chapters of The Jim and Dan Stories HERE.
