The Jim and Dan Stories Revisted: Chapter 5
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 2001 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. 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 to chapters which will amount to the whole book eventually.
5.
Death’s Poetry
My poet friend, Mara, lost her husband, Cory, unexpectedly just before Jimmy died in July. She was with Cory when it happened. By October I was ready to drive out to visit her. We picked apples from her orchard and sat on the edge of the woods by a rock cropping, Cory’s favorite spot, and compared notes.
“Do you want the community to start a food tree for you?” she asked.
“No, I don’t want to see people now,” I answered.
“I didn’t want to be alone,” Mara said.
“I throw things away easier now, but I save things easier too,” I shared. She knew what I meant (something about knowing what was important and what was not) because we were speaking the same language.
Mara cut all her hair off; it used to be long, the way Cory liked it. She wrote poetry for days and then went to The Pine Tavern Open Mike Night to read them with a new boldness. We had been enjoying each other’s poetry for years. When she told me about all the writing she was doing, I thought, “I wish I could do that.”
There are times when my mind is constantly composing sentences or thinking out loud in that off-centered dyslexic way I have. I can be sharp and witty in my own mind. Then there are times when my mind draws a blank, like the way I can’t remember jokes right after they’re told to me, or when a simple “How are you?” is too hard of a question for me to answer. I write because I don’t speak well on my feet, but I have a lot to say. I write because I don’t like to lose anything and writing something down is a way of keeping it.
I had written the first few stories about my brothers, and I thought, “That was that.” Now I was ready to write some poetry, so I got myself a new empty notebook with that intention. I sat down to try to write a poem and found these stories there instead. I was grateful to be writing them but worried too, because every story made me cry. I knew they would make my family cry too, and hadn’t we done that enough? Then I remembered this: The sadness is already there, the crying just lets it out. I thought about favorite books that I had read; the best parts were always those that made me cry.
No Pain No Gain
I don’t think there is anything wholly bad in this world. Every action has a reaction. Every death has its grace. Every cloud has a silver lining. Clichés are clichés for a reason. They are mnemonic reminders that everyone knows of basic universal truths.
Here’s another one: No pain, no gain. Why is it that tragedy can also be our greatest teacher, that in adversity is an opportunity to grow, that every pain deepens us if we are willing to let it?
Everyday at the hospital Kathy and I did a Motherpeace Tarot reading. We did it mostly to keep ourselves focused on our task of giving supportive care to Dan, rather than succumbing to our panic and the emotional pain we were feeling at the thought of losing our brother. When we were able to stay focused and allow what was happening to happen, even the Death card, which Dan got several times, sounded good. “Death is not an ending, but a transformation. Nothing in the universe is ever destroyed, things simply change form. Like the snake shedding its skin, fully conscious and aware of itself, a person leaving one state of being is simultaneously reborn into another.” In the same way a midwife helps bring a baby into this world, as naturally as possible, we wanted to assist Dan with his transition on the other end of life.
Dan lived the way he wanted to, and he was slow to make changes. When my sister Sherry, a nurse who works in a substance abuse and treatment clinic, would confront Dan if he drank a beer after knowing he had Hepatitis C, Dan would say, “I know, but I have to live, don’t I?”
When Dan e-mailed me about Jimmy and him coming to visit, he said, “It might be the last time this can happen like this.” When they did come, my impression was that Danny was too sick to be traveling. Two weeks later, when he flew to Massachusetts for Jim’s funeral, it was clear to all of us that he was too sick to have made that trip, since he had not recovered from the first one. But Dan felt he had attend Jim’s funeral, even if it was the last thing he would do, which it turned out it was. He cried when he saw Jim’s body and said about their trip together, “Those were supposed to be my last memories, not Jim’s.” Then he made us laugh when he touched Jim’s body and said, “So this is why they call it a stiff.”
Danny made every effort to do what he wanted to in his last months, which included giving of himself to his family. As sick as he was, and in between two hospital admissions while in Massachusetts, he pulled out a fifty dollar bill and said to Sherry, “Let’s go play Keno.” He knew how much Sherry enjoyed playing and that it was something fun they could do together. Later, back in the hospital again, he said to her, “I think I’m going to be a stiff soon.”
Danny stayed in Massachusetts for a couple of weeks after Jim’s funeral because he was too sick to travel on his own. He wanted to go home to Texas for “closure,” he told his childhood friend, Chuckie, from the Hull Village days. Chuckie flew up from Florida to take Dan home, while the rest of us were trying to recover from Jimmy’s death and Dan’s two hospital scares. Dan did get to sleep in his own bed for a few hours on the first night of his arrival home, before asking Chuckie to call an ambulance. In the Houston hospital, Dan spoke with my mother over the phone and told her he didn’t think he could do it (fight for his life); it was too hard. “What do you mean, you can’t do it!? You have to do it!” she, who had just buried her first son, told him in no uncertain terms.
“OK, Ma,” Dan answered obediently.
Dan never did get home to sleep in his own bed again. We went from telling him that he had to put up a good fight (which he did), to “We’re all alright, Dan. We’re taking care of all your business. You’re in a safe place. It’s okay to do whatever you need to.” I think Danny knew for a while that he wasn’t going to make it, but he waited until we also knew.
Practical Joker
It was Sunday and Chuckie was looking forward to taking me to Enron Field to see a baseball game. I had to tell him the truth: I would rather be with Dan.
I still remember the excited feelings I would get going up the elevator to Dan’s room, excited to be seeing him again, knowing every day was precious, grateful he was still here, and hoping for the best. There were also days when I didn’t feel that excitement and dreaded what I would find. Just the day before the baseball game Dan was in so much pain that all he did was yell or lay oblivious to us.
That day I didn’t go to the game with Chuckie was my last good day with Dan, sort of like my Keno playing experience with him. I remember him pursing his lips for me to kiss (too weak to smack them) and me feeding him soup. Chuckie, who had been with Dan for five days before I got there and, based on what he saw, didn’t have much hope for Dan’s recovery, said when he returned from the game, “Danny has really perked up! Your being here has done a world of good!”
Dan even played a good joke on me: He would sometimes leak fluid as it was building up inside him. What seemed to be tears fell down his face. “Dan are you crying!?” I asked alarmed.
He nodded his head, “Yes.”
“Why? What are you crying for?” I continued.
He answered with a pouting expression, “You called me Dylan. My name is Dan.”
It wasn’t unusual for me to call Dan by my son’s name and my son by Dan’s name by mistake. I thought Dan was losing it. Then I caught him looking over to Chuckie and winking out of the corner of his eye. The laughter we all had really felt good.
Later when Chuckie was leaving the room, he asked, “Do you want some coffee, Danny?” knowing Danny hated coffee and that he was being fed intravenously. Dan used one of his hand gestures to answer Chuckie. It wasn’t the “thumbs up” but did involve a finger. He still had his sense of humor, and, on this day, he still had some fight.
Losing My Virginity
Death is like sex. It’s something everyone does, but you hardly ever see it, and no one talks much about it–not publicly any ways. Death, like sex, is raw. It demands that you give it its due. Most people have a curious interest in death but at the same time are fearful of it. I remember as kids we would laugh nervously when hearses passed by. We were scared of the granite cemetery building where we knew they stored bodies over the winter when the ground was frozen.
I’ve been trying to understand the unfathomable depth of blood ties that rose up in me and my family members when Jim and Dan died. In looking closer at the sibling relationship, I realized that siblings, who have the same mother and father, are closer biologically than any other relationship. The only way to be closer is to be a twin.
Growing up as nine, there wasn’t much separation. When we were young, we thought of ourselves as a clan more than as individuals. There were the rare and precious times that our parents took us out individually, but, for the most part, it was all they could do to feed and clothe us and keep us from hurting each other. We may have liked a little more individual attention from our parents, but we knew we were loved, and as a group we had a sense of belonging.
Catholic, Jewish, and a handful of Protestant white kids was the extent of diversity at Hull High School. I wondered back then why the Jewish families were always smaller than ours. Although I knew most of those kids since early elementary school, we rarely socialized, inside or outside of school. Was it because they came from a close knit community of their own, another part of town, a different economic background? Are teenagers cliquish by nature? Jewish kids were about thirty-five percent of my graduating class and tended to excel in school. But with that excellence came the stress (or so I perceived), of worrying about getting good grades so they would be accepted to the colleges they wanted. We didn’t have that kind of stress. We knew we were accepted no matter what grades we brought home, no matter what we did after high school, which was never college (an abstract notion, not even in our realm of consideration). Our own father, who grew up during the Depression, only made it to the eighth grade; and wasn’t he the smartest man we knew? He was sent off to the Civilian Conservation Corp to help support his family. Many years later–he would probably like me to add–he got his GED, having passed the test with very high rankings.
As kids, we played outside when we were not in school. Sometimes we wandered in the cemetery, reading the names and dates on the gravestones. In older part of the cemetery, there were several gravestones for babies. Those especially intrigued us. We could tell by the dates that the bodies buried there had only lived a year or two. I remember imagining their little coffins, little bones, their family’s grief. We wondered out loud why they died, and we felt relieved that nothing like that happened to our family.
Occasionally, a school classmate’s parent would die. There were hushed whispers in the corridors, and the kid’s empty desk for a week or more, which is how we eventually learned what had happened. When the kid came back to school, we tried not to stare or think about the unthinkable.
For fifty-four years my family lived without a tragic loss in our unit of eleven. The death of a sibling, child, or parent–or any loved one and especially prematurely–is a loss of innocence for which there is no turning back. We thought we were all grown up, but Jim and Dan’s deaths reduced us to children. Uprooted from illusion, We’re all like little children, tender and exposed, when it comes to love, When it comes to death, our innocence is shook, in the face of such mystery, we are small, I wrote in a poem titled “For Jim.”
The Inevitable
I used to lie in bed at night as a young girl and think about life. Why in the world would I want to go out and find someone to marry to make a new family with when I already had a good family? Why would I want to find a stranger to live with when I was happy where I was? When I look back, my childhood seems like a dream, the way my future adult life seemed like a dream back then. But life is inevitable and so is change.
I practice a meditation technique taught by Sri Eknath Easwaran. I memorize sacred passages from various religious traditions and repeat them slowly to myself in meditation. The prayers came in handy during the hours of sitting with Dan. Let nothing upset you, Let nothing frighten you, Everything is changing, God alone is changeless….was one, by St. Teresa of Avila, I spoke out loud many times to Dan.
I plugged up my ears with tissue paper, closed my eyes, hoping people would think I was resting, and did my meditation every day in the hospital’s ICU waiting room. My job was Dan for those two weeks, and every day I worked overtime. From 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. I was at the hospital, then back to Dan’s apartment for deli food, to feed the cat, type out my e-mail report for the rest of the family, set the clock and then wake up and start it all over again. Each day included a back and forth drive through the city of Houston, a crash course in facing my dyslexic directional driving phobia, and a task I gladly relegated to my sister, who also has this same dyslexia, whenever possible. Meditation breaks were important.
The ICU waiting room was full of families who were, like us, living on the edge of life and death. I would see people day after day and get used to their faces, and then one day they’d be gone. I’d go in to see Dan and walk by an empty room that yesterday had a patient in it. I wondered when I stopped going to the hospital, did anyone notice? Did anyone walk past Danny’s empty room and wonder what happened to him? Did they notice Kathy and Jeanne and I when we walked out of the hospital in a daze, escorted by the priest that last day?
When we were young, my dad used to look at us in wonder and ask, “Are you real?” It was an irritating question back then; of course we were real. After I had my own kids, I knew what he meant. I have always been in awe of my kids, how they could not exist in one moment, and then suddenly exist, as if they always were. Death has a similar awe to it. I couldn’t seem to really get that my brothers were here one minute and gone the next.
I sat on my porch, in the same chair Dan had sat in, soaking up the last of the afternoon sun, staring at the very spot where I snapped a picture of Jim in his blue Nike sweatshirt eating watermelon in July. My husband, Joe (yes, I eventually did get married and more than once), came out, and we walked hand in hand to the mailbox. He had just returned from an intensive ten day meditation retreat and was filled with new purpose. While walking he talked about how the experience had profoundly changed him. I had been home from the last funeral for over a month. I knew I had been distant.
“Good,” I said “because I have been profoundly changed too.”
The two weeks Joe was away was time I needed to be alone, to absorb the impact of losing my brothers, to recover myself so that I would have something to offer others in my life. “Maybe now that we both have been profoundly changed, it will be easier to come together again,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, and smiled.
____________Colleen Redman / Read more chapters HERE.
