We call those who have lost their spouses ‘widows’ [or ‘widowers’] and children who have lost their parents ‘orphans’ but there is no word in the English language to describe a parent who loses a child. Your children are supposed to outlive you by many decades, to confront the burden of mortality only by way of your dying. To witness your child’s death is a hell too heavy for the fabric of language. Words simply collapse.
—from Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
I cannot imagine anything worse than the death of your child. When I have even gotten close to pondering such an unimaginable, I literally shake.
I became aware of how words collapse when my brother, my baby brother, died suddenly of cardiac arrest. My husband used to tease me that I thought my brother was perfect. This wasn’t far from the truth. He wasn’t perfect but he was kind and funny and caring and smart and funny—-did I mention how funny he was? He had an amazing gift in making people laugh.
I will never forget the day I got the phone call. I was serving as the Dean of the Cathedral in Burlington, Vermont and was meeting with a member of the staff. I noticed my cell phone vibrating and glanced over (as sometimes I received emergency phone calls when a parishioner was ill or had been taken to the hospital). I did not recognize the number but I noticed the city was Goldsboro where my brother lived. I thought he might be calling me from his office and that is why I did not recognize the number. But I silenced the call and did not answer since I was in the middle of a meeting. I will call him back after my meeting I thought. But a few minutes later the phone vibrated again. And then again. Same number. Goldsboro. I was concerned that something was wrong. I apologized to the staff person and said I felt like I needed to take the call. She was very gracious and left my office.
“Hello,” I said.
“Jeannie ,”(I knew when he said Jeannie, my childhood nickname) that it was someone from North Carolina and someone who knew our family. There was a slight silence and then he told me who it was. John, one of my brother’s closest friends.
“Jeannie, Tim died.”
Silence. On both ends of the line.
“What?”
“Tim died, Jeannie.”
Then I realized that John was like my brother; they were both great pranksters and, of course, this was a joke. They loved practical jokes.
But I didn’t think it was funny. Not funny at all.
“John, that is not funny. This is not something you joke about.”
Silence.
“Jeannie, I am not joking. Tim died this morning.”
I burst into tears as some guttural sound escaped my throat.
He went on to explain that he and my brother had been to the gym that morning and worked out and Tim was in great spirits. When Tim returned home, he turned on the sprinkler to water the lawn and went inside to shower and get dressed to go to work. He asked his wife Dianne to turn off the sprinkler before she left for work in case he forgot. Then he went to shower.
And then he dropped dead. He quite literally dropped dead. His sweet dear wife heard a thud and went to check and immediately called 9-1-1. They came and tried for a long time to revive him but they could not. She called neighbors and they came too. But no one could bring him back to life.
After calling my husband and then sharing with the staff what had happened, I somehow managed to drive myself home from the Cathedral. I know I called our children (or maybe my husband did) and we packed and flew to North Carolina but I honestly cannot remember making the reservations or any part of the flight. I have no memory of anything until we walked in the door of my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Goldsboro and I embraced my nephews. I remember that long hug that spoke the words we could not bear to utter aloud.
A deep and desperate sadness settled on all of us, my brother’s family and his friends and his colleagues and his community, as we tried to cope with the shock of his sudden death. This man who had just had a physical and was proclaimed healthy. A person who was more full of life than almost anyone I had ever known. This death made no sense.
Weird bits of songs kept floating through my head…only the good die young…. .I didn’t really believe those lyrics but they kept floating through my mind. Because he was so good. So very, very good.
Food and flowers filled the house and neighbors and friends stopped by. Is this the way that everyone tries to get through grief or is this just how we do it in the South? Fried chicken and country ham biscuits and homemade pound cake and flowers and plants and so many cards that it felt like they could encircle the earth two or three times.
The funeral was on my mother’s birthday, July 3rd. I remember thinking how glad I was that our parents were both dead because I don’t think they could have endured the loss of their only son. Not Tim. I don’t think they could have recovered. Those of us who were alive could barely get through those first days.
Our children flew in, as did other friends from afar, to gather and to be there for the funeral. After the funeral, after realizing that it would not matter how long I stayed in Goldsboro, my brother would never be alive again, I returned to Vermont. It would be more accurate to say that a part of me returned to Vermont as I would never feel completely whole again.
Dianne was a widow. His boys weren’t orphans because they still had their mother but they were fatherless now. It all seemed too impossible.
I remember thinking, “But what am I? What is my sister?” There is no word, no name, to describe a sibling who has lost a brother or a sister. You are changed forever but there is no label to let others—or your own self—know that you are not the same. We felt so lost without him.
I had lost my baby brother. I had known him since the day he was born. He would play dolls with me and I would play with his little green plastic army men with him. He slept on the top bunk bed and I slept on the bottom. We watched cartoons together on Saturday mornings. We were the all-star team in our backyard when our Dad organized a softball game after supper. We went to elementary school together, carpooling with our neighbors, the Barfields. I grew up and so did he. We both traveled our own paths. I went to Carolina and he went to NC State. He served in the Air Force as a JAG and then as an attorney and then as a District Court Judge. I was a mom, a weaver, a museum director and then ordained as an Episcopal Priest. He teased me about being the only “downwardly mobile person” he knew.
My brother truly cared about people He would sometimes call me and ask if I would pray for someone he worked with that was going through a difficult time. I always did. I loved it that he cared for people. I am glad to have these memories even though I still wish it could have been otherwise, that it had been a bad prank, a joke. That he was still alive. We were looking forward to old age together as siblings.
But that is not the way it is. Life was interrupted and will never be the same. It seems strange to write this, to try to remember the little details of that phone call, that day, the funeral, all that has come after. But it also seems important. I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forget his death and I certainly don’t want to forget his life.
There is a lot of talk these days of when things will return to “normal” after we finally arrive on the other side of this pandemic. I am not sure I really believe in normal. I am not sure that after a tragedy like the death of someone you love or a communal tragedy like the Covid-19 virus, that we ever return to what we once knew as normal.
As much as I love words, Suleika Jaouad is right: sometimes words just collapse. There is no right word to describe ourselves or the time that follows after loss, after grief, after trauma. There is no normal, there is no returning to the way it once was.
Our strength and ability to keep going is fueled by the same love that broke us to pieces. We remember. We remember a life well lived. We remember all that was bright and beautiful. Oh, so bright. Oh, so beautiful. Oh, how he could make me laugh!
Yes to lose someone sudden or after a short or long illness sometimes seems unbearable. They have gone to a better place and we are left behind without them. I try to remember all the wonderful memories. I am so sorry about your brother.
I am so sorry about your brother - this brought tears to my eyes. What a beautiful gift of writing you have.