Brother's Birthday
In my first blog post I promised you some insight into my world and I hope to share bits and bobs, most likely in fits and starts, as appropriate to time, place and circumstance. It is my hope that this manner of sharing will aid those who may be interested or those who might benefit from it, to gain understanding and be encouraged. Unfortunately, much of the story will necessarily be shared in pieces over time and you the reader may have to fit it together as you would a puzzle.
Today's post is one of those puzzle pieces, instead of working on the corners and the edges of the puzzle first, I'm diving smack into the middle and trying to clear the clouds. I was inspired to begin here because my baby brother's birthday is today and I have a theory that I want to share about what should be his special day of celebration. A bit of sprawl is necessary to get there though, so reader please bear with me.
It's fitting that my brother's birthday and Mother's Day fall in the same month. Though my little brother Danny, was born to my first mother, Katherine, I was the one to whom that little 5 pound preemie was ultimately delivered to and he is the one who was the first recipient of my budding maternal skills.
Danny was born on May 23, 1965, at that time, I was just shy of five years old. At first our mother did her best, but she was already in the beginning stages of alcohol addiction and it wasn't long after that drink became more a part of the fabric of who she was than we were.
(Yes, I know that sounds a lot like self pity and melodrama, but honestly, it is not. It's just the facts and the story can't be told without sharing the facts.)
Because of her alcohol dependency, I necessarily became a surrogate mom. (I will share more of that crazy journey later.) My poor mother had a difficult existence; she had already experienced great loss with more loss looming on the horizon, ultimately resulting in despair. In addition, my father had moved us to the New Jersey suburbs from The Bronx, away from her parents, her sister, her friends and extended family and the rest of her support system. I know that in his heart he believed that a nice home in a nice neighborhood with a front and back garden and a built in pool was in our best interest, but at the end of the day it only served to isolate her.
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Maureen, Danny & Anne Marie, circa November 1965 |
(Must be seawater coursing through my veins because I love to cruise!)
(Google her, she's really an amazing vessel)
As you can imagine, due to the rigorous schedule the ship adhered to, my father was seldom home with us, leaving my mother to care for three very small children alone in new surroundings for weeks and sometimes months at a time. I wish I could clearly remember more of those really early years, but when I try I can only feel and not really see. I am, however, able to vividly recall the years that followed.
(I could easily jut off on a bunny trail here and compare her life with small children to mine. Though my husband did not travel for weeks at a time as my father did, the hours he kept as a college basketball coach frequently left me to parent alone.)
Alas, no wild animal trails for me though, because there could be no comparison between the young mom she was and the young mom that I was because she was experiencing the ravages of grief on a colossal scale at the same time as all of the above was happening. She certainly had a load to bear; in addition to raising us alone, she was processing the loss of two infants, their story will be told in a future post.
As an adult, I know that there are many ways to grieve. Though, Praise God, I have not lost a child, I have tried to imagine what that must feel like, but when I get too far into that dark corner of my imagination, I have to call on Jesus so that Satan will flee. Even inching toward that place from a safe distance overwhelms me and fills me with dread, anxiety and fear! Thankfully, I KNOW MY JESUS and I know that if I were ever to experience such an unimaginable loss, that He would not leave me and that He would equip me in ways that I can't even begin fathom now.
(Dear, Sweet, Precious Father God, please protect my boys and keep them free from harm, In Jesus Name, Amen)
But what happens to those who don't have intimate, personal knowledge of God's character? What happens to people like my mother who believe that a person's worthiness is measured and weighed by God on the impossible scale of good deeds vs. bad thoughts and in her mind, she's falling short and falling apart? What happens to people who are left to process their grief alone? What happens to those who don't know that their Creator desires to comfort them and will ultimately recycle their grief into something unimaginably beautiful if only they would trust Him? In my mother's case, she ultimately couldn't face it, she was not able muster the strength or the will to soldier through the searing pain to emerge refined and transformed on the other side. The fire was too hot and she had no cheering squad to urge her on. Rather than allow herself to be licked by the flames she chose to douse them with Seagram's VO. When alcohol is poured on flame, what happens? The flames leap higher and hotter until they spread and consume all that is around sparing nothing or nobody in the vicinity.
On May 19, 1967, I was just short of seven years old. I was in the first grade and before I left for school that morning, my mother was trying to brush the knots out of my long, super fine, flyaway white-blonde hair. (I have no memory of where my almost two-year old brother, Danny, was in the house.) She was being rough and she was hurting me and I twisted away from her which made her very angry. She threw the brush across the room and slapped my face. I remember that she and I were sitting on the foot of her bed. My four year old sister, Maureen, was in the bed and she had been sick that morning and was vomiting. Right about the same time she began throwing up again and my mother yanked her toward the bathroom; that is the last memory I have of my sister.
Shortly afterward I caught the bus to school. Somewhere toward the middle of the day we heard an ambulance go past, Sr. Theophane stood us up to pray as was the custom in our Catholic School when we heard an ambulance. Shortly thereafter, I heard my name come across the loud speaker requesting that I report to the office prepared to go home. Two nuns, Sr. Anne Jeffers and Sr. Theresa Katherine or Sr. Cecelia King, crouched down to my eye level and informed me that my little sister, Maureen, had died. Ironically, she had been the one in the ambulance that we had just prayed for. The coroner ultimately ruled the cause of her death to be secondary to "acute viral pneumonitis" but as an adult, with the benefit of knowledge and hindsight, I have a different theory.
(There is so much more to this part of the story left to share, but to help me get to the point of this post sooner, I am now skipping ahead.)
Planning a funeral for your child is difficult with your husband somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I hope that there will be an appropriate and natural time to share with you in the future what I most remember about those days. There are many stories yet to share about that day and the days preceding and following the funeral.
Her funeral was held the day after Danny's 2nd birthday. Though my grandmother and others tried to make it festive for him, I don't believe that even once in his life since, he has enjoyed or looked forward with anticipation to his birthday. I believe his little psyche was damaged in ways we could not anticipate and his little brain processed those days traumatically and each year since then, he viscerally associates his birthday with that dreadfully sad time. Every year I hope that this will be the year that he can finally shed the shackles of sadness and the cloud that lingers over his joy.
Following the death of my sister, our family life grew grim and what little was left of our childhood died. My father returned to the sea and my mother drowned in her bottles. The next several years were years of difficulty all around. It was during this time, that I learned to watch Danny breathe while he slept so he wouldn't die of the respiratory illness that had him previously hospitalized in an oxygen tent due to his premature birth. While my mother was passed out in her oblivion, I potty trained her baby, changed his diapers and made sure he was fed. I fought with him to get those tortuous shoes with the bar across them onto his feet while he kicked at me and I protected him from being hit by cars and from wandering away. I resent none of it and consider that time some of the best proving grounds of my life and it solidified and cemented our connection forever. My deepest desire for him now, however, is for him to finally enjoy a birthday unencumbered by the anchor of something he was too young to identify but was absorbed by his spirit.
In 1971, at the age of 37, my mother joined my sister in St. Gertrude's Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey. Cause of death was ruled "cirrhosis of the liver".
In subsequent years, we cobbled together the strands of what was left to build a new family. But our lives were forever altered and changed by the events of those early years, and though circumstances improved a bit with time, we never were really thought of as "normal" by our peers and we suffered because of it. The world is different now, people would intervene on our behalf if this was happening today, but in those days everybody "minded their own business". Nobody saw and nobody really understood what we endured.
As a result of what we experienced together, my brother and I were unusually close, sadly due to distance we rarely see each other now. But I need him to know, just in time for his birthday, that he was the one who gave my young life purpose, he provided me a reason to persevere. In caring for him, I learned how to love and to put others first instead of just trying to survive myself. If it were not for him, I'm not sure that I would have survived my childhood or my teens. In the back of my mind, I knew that he needed me and that I needed to be available for him. Thank you my little brother, for everything that our circumstances forced me to be, it is because of you that I am who I am now.
Yes, life is hard and circumstances are rough. Would I change even one thing if I could? Absolutely not! Just as He promised in His Word, God worked all of the ugly together and made it good. No tear was wasted, no sorrow lost, through all of these difficult situations, God was calling me into relationship with Himself. Every heartache either opened or closed a door that led me to where I am today. I am the sister of a strong, resilient and wise man, the wife of a kind and generous man, the mother of two talented, compassionate & unselfish sons who love the Lord and seek Him daily and I am the daughter of the King! I am living proof that God keeps His promises.
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" Romans 8:28-31
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