Loose Leaf Notes

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. 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.

3.

The Last Rites

“Are you ready for the priest, Dan?”

By this point, we were able to read Dan’s slightest expression or his most subtle nod.  We all knew his answer was, “Yes.”

I wasn’t quite prepared for a priest from Africa with an accent and a white lab coat on.  “You know we want a priest?” I said.

“I am a priest,” he answered.

“You know that Dan is Catholic?” I added.

“I am a Catholic,” he answered.

Receiving The Last Rites turned out to be a very important part of Dan’s last day.  The relief that he felt when the priest put his hand on Dan’s forehead, pronouncing his past sins absolved, was palpable. Danny’s whole body fell back further into the bed as if he had been shocked.   Although I hadn’t been a practicing Catholic for many years, I whispered to my sister, “That looks good to me. I want that at my death.”

This wasn’t the first time Dan received The Last Rites.  Back in the early 70’s someone dropped Danny off late at night on my parent’s doorstep.  He was barely alive, suffering from a drug overdose, one that it didn’t look like he would recover from.  He was taken by ambulance to the emergency room where he was given The Last Rites.  Not only did Dan recover, but both he and Jim turned their lives around by conquering drug addiction of the worst kind.

Ironically, my father also lost two brothers prematurely, one to a heart condition, the other to a WWII Japanese Prison Camp in The Philippines.  It was common to lose young men to war.  In the mid 70’s in Hull and the surrounding areas, it was fairly common to lose them to drugs. And the young men we didn’t lose then, we are losing now to Hepatitis C.

One of the symptoms of the advanced stages of liver disease is inappropriate or mean-tempered behavior due to the body’s inability to eliminate toxins.  This explained why Dan was sometimes confused or not easy to get along with when he was in the hospital.  The kidney dialysis was a long shot that, in the end, could not save Danny’s life.  What it did do was clear out the toxins that had built up in his body, allowing him a peaceful lucidity and a return to himself in the last days of his life, for which I will always be grateful.

Soon after The Last Rites, Dan’s breathing tubes were taken off. After a loud sigh of relief and speaking to us briefly–“I’m all right,” and then a last “Hello,” to Kathy (who he had not yet spoken to since she arrived in Houston five days after I did)–he was able to breathe on his own for two hours.

“Do you want some pain medication (morphine), Dan?” Jeanne asked sometime during those last two hours when Dan’s breath became more labored.  We all saw his answer. It was “No.”

Shoes in the Closet

My brother John had a dream shortly after Dan died.  He had arrived at Dan’s apartment with the U-haul (which he actually did do weeks later) to close it down, and Dan was there. John was astounded! “Dan, you’re dead!  How can this be,” he asked?

“I know I’m dead, but I’m all right,” Dan answered, and then he said, “And now it’s like Christmas.”  The dream continued with Dan giving away his belongings to John and other family members.

We all wanted John, the only sibling besides me now who was not living in Massachusetts, to have Dan’s computer.  “We want you online.  We want to keep track of you,” I told him.  John, the black sheep, hard drinking fisherman rouge, who had also contracted Hepatitis C from drug use in the 70’s and was now determined to stay sober in every way, sometimes needed to be kept track of.

When Kathy, Jeanne, (who came after my mother left), and I were staying in Dan’s apartment, we got a phone call from John. John had lived with Danny for several years in Quincy, Massachusetts, and then in Texas, and was particularly broken up.  He cried when he asked us if he could do Dan’s eulogy.  We all knew it was his calling, especially since our youngest sister, Tricia, had a dream that John was singing “Let it be” in the church during Dan’s funeral.  He didn’t sing, but we did play “Let it be”

the morning of the burial, and John did give a moving eulogy for Dan.  We all choked up when he ended it with, “…Today we put my big brother Dano to rest beside his big brother Jim.  I guess that makes me the big brother now.”

I called Dan’s apartment when John, Joey, and Nancy, who were going to drive Dan’s Toyota Tundra truck back to Massachusetts, were there to close it down. “I have a strange request.  Bring me a pair of Dan’s shoes.  I want to keep them in my closet,” I said. The request was related to one of my most vivid childhood memories, and one that has been re-stimulated with Dan’s passing.

When Danny was almost four years old, he went to Florida with our grandparents for the summer, but they ending up keeping him for a whole year.  A year might as well be a lifetime in the mind of a child, in the minds of children.  I was five and was rummaging through the room that Dan and Jim shared when I found a pair of Danny’s shoes in the closet. They were a 1950’s style, brown with white in the center.  Finding them was an abrupt reminder of the brother I used to have, the one I had forgotten about, the one I wanted back!  I carried those shoes around with me all day while I cried inconsolably.  I wanted my parents to witness my anguish, so they would get my brother back home for me.

I asked for a pair of Dan’s shoes because I don’t want to forget my brother, the child he was, the man he was.  I wish he could come back, like he did from Florida.

Murphy’s Law

“These stories are great!” my sister Sherry’s email read.  “You should get them published into a book!” her husband, Nelson, added.

I had been writing all weekend and was in a mild mania which meant, besides not sleeping well and writing obsessively, that I was feeling rather grandiose about my writing.  Sherry and Nelson’s comments brought me back down to life-size.  Who did I think I was?  I couldn’t write a book.  Besides, they couldn’t see the scraps of scribbled pages in every room of my house that I would have to puzzle together, once I could figure out how to read my own writing.

Just a week before when I was at my friend Katherine’s house, she handed me a book about two sisters growing up together and said, “Here. This is like the book you’re going to write someday.”  After looking it over, I handed it back.  “This is a novel.  I only want to read memoirs right now,” I said.

A few days later she, determinedly, drove over to my house and handed me another book.  Knowing that we share a love of reading “all things Irish” and that it was a memoir, she had checked out a library book for me.  It was called “Are You Somebody? An Accidental Memoir” and was written by Nuala O’Faulan. “The accidental memoir part reminds me of something you would say,” she said.

When Jim died, I wrote his eulogy.  I said to Sherry, “It’s as if I’ve been learning to write all my life to come to this point.  What could be a more important vocation than to write a loved one’s eulogy?” Now, it’s as if I haven’t been able to stop writing Jim’s eulogy.  After he died, I remember thinking, “Jimmy, I wish everyone knew you.”  This writing may be my way of trying to make that happen.  Maybe this is the book Katherine knew I would write.

I think of my self-depreciating reaction to Sherry and Nelson’s comments as a genetic trait, one that is most probably Irish Catholic. It reminded me of one of the last stories I shared with my family from when Jim was visiting me: Jim was always an excellent athlete–all those hours as a kid hitting rocks at the beach with a stick had paid off. One of the things he wanted to do while in Virginia was play golf with my husband, Joe, which he did.  After the “first nine,” Joe called me on the phone for some reason I can’t remember now.  “How’s it going?” I asked him.  “Jim’s kicking my ass!” was his answer.  “Yes!” I thought. I was secretly rooting for Jim.

When they returned home, I heard the rest of the story.  Somewhere, after the first nine holes, Joe complimented Jim, saying, “Jimmy, that is the longest and most beautiful shot I’ve ever seen anyone make on that hole.” It was all downhill for Jim after that.  To put it in Jim’s own words, after that compliment, he “sucked!”

Somehow, I thought that golf story about Jim was sweet.  I also thought it sad, remembering my Dad’s “to

the point” words when talking about his family. “We were a talented bunch, but none of us lived up to our full potential,” he told me.  Something to do with the far-reaching effects of our ancestral legacy of Irish poverty and oppression, I suspected.

Dreaming of Beach Front Property

My brothers feel so far away, not because they’re dead now but because their bodies are buried in Hull and I’m in Virginia.  I guess I had to leave Hull to really appreciate it.  Many of the things I’ve experienced in the last twenty years, I can’t imagine having happened if I had stayed in Hull–like home schooling my boys, learning to grow and can my own food, learning to contra dance, make herbal remedies, live in a bus, vend my own jewelry at Grateful Dead shows, or jump into a hole in the ice naked after a sauna.  Who would I be now if I never left?  If I never moved to Texas, how would Danny’s life have been different?

I dream of Hull the way I imagine my Grandmother dreamt of her homeland in Youhal, Ireland.  I have a re-occurring dream of walking the length of Hull, the way we used to as kids when we would spend all our money, including our bus fare, at Hull’s amusement park (Paragon Park) and had no way home but to walk.  I think I’m the only kid in my family, or all of Hull for that matter, who grew up when “Paragon” was still there and never rode on the roller coaster.  I always played it safe. Not like my reckless brothers.

Danny kept newspaper clippings of some of his friend’s obituaries taped to the posts of the entertainment center that he built.  One was of a friend he grew up with who died of Hepatitis C, another was a friend who died of a drug overdose.  One of the eeriest things I found in Dan’s apartment was a picture he had taken of a friend’s grave in the Hull Village Cemetery.  It was directly behind the very spot where Jimmy was now buried, the same place where Dan was also destined to be.

Danny and I had a shared dream of buying a beach front condo in Hull, so we could both spend extended time there.  I’m still in Virginia, but Danny is home now.  If you stand at his grave, lean forward and look to the left, all the way down Duck Lane, you can see the ocean.

Two More Boys

Matty likes firemen.  Patrick likes Godzilla. My mother and father were overwhelmed with us kids when we were growing up, and then most all their grandchildren came at once.  Matthew and Patrick, our youngest sister Tricia’s kids, came much later and have been the blessing of my parent’s golden years.

I try to remember what Jim and Dan liked as little boys, but my sisters and I were so wrapped up in our “girl culture,” our paper dolls and Barbies, that it’s hard to recall what the boys were doing.  They ate a lot of cereal and watched The Three Stooges on television.  Jimmy hit rocks with a stick at the beach for hours or sometimes hit a ball against the house which would usually cause my Dad to yell.  Danny used to wake me up early to go down to the pantry and sneak cookies before anyone else was awake.  I got in trouble because I was older, so I remember the injustice I felt about that (it wasn’t my idea!) more than the memory of Danny.

Our family likes to talk about Jim and Dan now because every memory shared is like a new memory we all can own.  The noisy ruckus coming off my mother’s “A Street” porch during the funeral weeks was almost embarrassing.  Aren’t we supposed to be mourning?  When you get us all together, it can be loud, not because we’re not getting along but because we are.  We sent Patrick in to sit on Poppa’s lap and watch television with him because it cheers Poppa up.  The trade off was that my dad (Poppa) would have to watch Godzilla.  Even I sat with Patrick watching old B-movie Godzilla scenes (which–come to think of it–reminds me of young Jim) just to be close to his sweetness.

“Patrick thinks his Uncle Jimmy is an astronaut now,” Tricia told me when my husband and sons and I were at her house to have dinner.  We were in the yard, and I couldn’t help notice a child’s life-sized motorcycle that was sitting on the top of a picnic table, tied down with rope.

“What’s that for?” I asked.  “I don’t know.  Ask Matty,” Trish answered with a glint in her eye.

I never did find out what the motorcycle was tied up for, but seeing it sure did cheer me up.

__________Colleen Redman / Read Chapter 4 HERE.