The Jim and Dan Stories Revisited: Chapter 19
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.
19.
Dear Diary
Dear Diary, Today is Sunday. I went to church with my mother. My old boyfriend Kevin’s mother sat right behind us. I didn’t know she was going to be there. I wore my new green vest and my black wool overcoat. They wear pants now in church and drink wine with the host. They walk up and don’t kneel; they don’t stick out their tongues to get it. I remember once when I was seven years old, I threw-up during communion. I think it was before I ate the host. We weren’t supposed to let it touch our teeth. We wore hats back then, too. I liked the sermon, when the priest tells a story. It’s the only part I understand. I wish everyone would be good when they left the church and remember the stuff that he said. They don’t have statues in church anymore. I’m sad because I like to look at them, especially the one of Mary and baby Jesus. The one with Jesus on the cross bleeding is scary. I liked the stained glass windows, but there was too much singing, and I didn’t know the words. I tried not to cry when they mentioned Jim and Dan’s names with all the other people they were praying for. I felt self-conscious and got distracted by a ribbon outside that was flapping near the window. It was probably from a wreath because it was just after Christmas, but I thought it might have been Jim and Dan wanting me to notice them. “Come outside,” I thought they were saying, and then, “Look, see how free we are now.”
Don’t Hang Up
Times have changed. You can’t hang up after dialing a wrong number because when you do, the person you didn’t mean to call will call you back. “It was just a wrong number…Jeez, I’m sorry,” you say. It’s called, Caller ID. Or maybe you’re in the middle of a sentence, talking to a friend who gets a signal, “I’ll call you right back. I have another call,” your friend says. What is this, Wall Street!?
There was a time when people would call me up just to hear my answering machine message or to leave a poem. We want to be alone… Or maybe we’re not home… Leave your poem after the tone… was one I used for a while. Once when I called my parents house and the answering machine picked up, I heard my dad say simply this: “State your business.”
Weeks after Jim died his voice was still on his answering machine. Several of us called up to hear it, Jim’s disembodied voice, a deep resonant voice that matched his handsome looks, one that would have made a good weather newscaster, we all agreed. It was a standard message that got right to the point, but it didn’t matter to us what he said; we just wanted to hear his voice. We each held the phone to our ear, the way we would hold it to Dan’s weeks later, and said our silent last goodbye. We would have loved to leave a message after the beep, but we knew he wouldn’t get it or ever call us back again.
I dialed Jimmy’s number from my parents house in Hull, but Brian and Valerie, who are hard to get a hold of, weren’t home. I had seen them both, only briefly, on their way out of my parent’s house while I was going in. Brian had a new black leather jacket on. Val was with her friend who looks like Ani DeFranko. They were carrying out movies from my Dad’s famous collection, the one that has more videos in it than the video store in Floyd does. I tried the number again from Sherry’s house in Marshfield…still no answer.
I guess I had thought that if I went home to Hull, I would somehow find a part of Jim and Dan there. But they aren’t there, anymore than they’re at my house, and my family is just as lost without them as I am.
No one was home. I had to hang up. Maybe I’ll try again later…
Waiting for the Next Shoe to Drop
People have told me that I look like Bonnie Raitt, or Angie Dickerson, or Meryl Streep. Sherry and I don’t look like sisters, the way Jim and Dan didn’t look like brothers. Contrary to the above list, I’m a brunette, while Sherry is blonde and looks like Goldie Hawn.
On New Year’s Eve, Tricia, who looks like Meg Ryan and more like Sherry, came over to Sherry’s house where we were celebrating. We ordered to-go food and watched home movies. Sherry’s husband, Nelson, who when smoking his pipe, looks like Sherlock Holmes or what I think Sherlock Holmes should look like, served us New Castle beer, which I call New Balance (even though I know they’re sneakers). Heather is Sherry’s daughter but she looks like Goldie Hawn’s. I wore her 6-inch platform shoes because they made me feel… altered, more so than wearing sunglasses does. I tried to convince Tricia that they were my shoes while she tried to keep a straight face. Andrew, Sherry’s son, who looks like Emminem the rapper (but better), was in Boston celebrating the way most people do. We watched live news coverage from downtown Boston. Everyone was pumped up for some reason. It was almost midnight and so Tricia went home to be with her husband and sleeping kids. We changed the channel and watched the Times Square Ball drop. 2002, sure is a funny number.
What Goes In Must Come Out
Feeding the airplane luggage, via the conveyer belt… I wrote in my yellow pocket notepad. The conveyer belt was the view from my window seat, waiting for take-off from Boston to Charlotte, where there was several feet of snow, and then to Roanoke, I hoped.
After writing that line, I got lost in doodles. How to start? I hadn’t written since my incoming flight, five days ago – not even a note – and so much had happened.
I usually carry dried prunes whenever I go on vacation because my bodily functions tend to slow down in unfamiliar settings. Too bad there isn’t a fruit I can eat to get words to flow on a regular basis. I scribbled out a word or two and then…more doodles. So I put the notepad into my pocketbook, only to take it out a few minutes later. I wrote a few more words and then more doodles. I put the notepad away and took it out, again. This went on for the whole plane ride, like how at home I keep going back to the kitchen for one more bite of food rather than fill my plate and eat in one sitting. Do people write like they eat? How must this look to those nearby who don’t understand this temperamental process? The muse is fickle like an already fed cat… I wrote as the plane was landing.
When we came to a stop everyone that could abruptly stood up. After a bustle of activity, retrieving belongings, an anxious boredom overtook the plane as the long line of passengers ready to file out waited in the aisle for the door to open. I looked out of my window to access the snowfall and noticed the conveyor belt was back. It was turned on waiting to catch out-going luggage that was about to be spit out from the airplane’s underbelly.
What goes in usually comes out, like what goes up comes down. That’s an encouraging thought, I told myself as our line began to move, first in fits and starts and then in one big whoosh, I disembarked. I was ready for more than doodles, like I was hungry for more than sky-mix and pretzels. I was also full with new experiences to digest…seeing my brothers’ newly made gravestone, the place at the Blue Hills Observatory where Jimmy’s tribute flag will fly, being in the city with my family at Christmas-time, and at church on Sunday for the first time in ages. I wanted to get home and finish telling this story. I had one more plane ride to go. ________Colleen Redman / Read chapters 1-18 HERE.
