I thought the title would help move things along, but I've been staring at it now for 20 minutes. It seems I'm not quite as ready as I thought.
Did I skip the pleasantries? Hi, howya been, long time no see. I haven't been alright.
It's been a long hiatus, something like 6 months since I posted. It was never supposed to be that long, initially I just wanted to take a few weeks to catch up some things around the house I was falling behind on. I had figured I needed to take some time to actually do some things, or I wasn't going to have anything to talk about. Of course, life has a way of happening, and a few weeks quickly turned into a couple months, a couple turned into a few, and then,
Well, then the whole world stopped moving for a while.
In early September, my little brother Chad and his daughter went to the hospital to get tested for Covid. He fainted in his car while waiting for the test, and that same morning his wife was sent home from her job as a nurse for having a fever. Chad and his wife both tested positive, as did their son. Their daughter never tested positive. Neither have I, despite being surrounded by people who have, and recently fighting off an illness that destroyed my sense of taste and smell. I never showed a fever, either.
My brother fainted again a few days later, while quarantined with his family. He got five stitches above his eye, and they sent him back home. We're still not sure why nobody thought they should admit him at that time. He fainted again shortly after that, and was finally admitted, with O2 levels around 80. It was quickly determined that he was developing blood clots in his lungs as a complication of the Covid infection.
By this time, my mother and my other little brother were of course freaking out, and made the trip from NY to SC to be near him. I process things differently than most people, and took the news in stride. I always take news in stride, that's just how I'm built.
I continued taking it in stride as my brother was moved, intubated and put into a drug induced coma. After sobbing at his bedside for a week while he remained frail, but stable, my mother and other brother returned home to NY. I say they were sobbing at his bedside, but because of Covid restrictions in ICU, that isn't really true. Mom had to take turns with his wife sobbing at the bedside, while my healthy brother did the driving to and from the hospital, and kept an eye on mom's 'husband'.
It's 'husband' in quotes because they aren't actually married, but this man has been in and out of mom's life for my entire life. He's a former junkie and thief, and a current alcoholic who is prone to coughing fits that lead to seizures. My healthy brother is also an alcoholic, but functional enough to do what needs doing. The situation caused me a little worry and stress, but not enough to drop what I was doing and take control of it. When they returned to NY, I was relieved that nothing more horrible than having a brother in ICU had happened, and looked forward to life getting back to some kind of 'normal'.
About 3 days after they got back, healthy brother called me, sobbing, and told me I needed to go down to SC with mom. I was very resistant... taking a depressing 'vacation' into a situation where all I can do is stand there and be stoic, while the things that need doing in my own life go undone, well, naturally that's something I wasn't very keen to do. I went and saw my mother, thinking that I could talk my way out of this trip, when mom told me that the doctors wanted the family together to make THE CHOICE.
If you know what choice I'm talking about, I'm sorry. If you've had to participate in that choice for someone under 45 years old, I'm really sorry. I say I'm ready to talk about it, but that doesn't make it any easier. It's hard to type it out in blunt words, and I feel that tightness in my throat right now. My vision is tunneling a little bit. It's been over a month, and my ears are ringing just like they were when mom broke the news to me, and then broke down sobbing.
This is harder than I thought it would be. Fortunately for you guys, you don't have to wait around for an hour or so while I pull myself together. You can skim right past this part if you want, it's one of the best things about experiencing things second-hand... you can just skip over the uncomfortable parts. Of course, if you want to sit there for an hour, uncomfortably, knowing there's nothing you can really do or say, you're welcome to do that. I won't judge.
That's Chad on the right, standing next to dad, who we lost a little over 4 years ago. As you can see, this pic is old enough that it's an actual photograph. For our younger readers, 'photographs' are how we used to take pics before smart phones. You would point and click, just like with a phone, but then you would have to wait a month to get the pictures inside 'developed' before you found out if they were any good. That's what people spent their money on before streaming services and NFTs.
I'm not the guy you call, generally, unless you've exhausted all other options. When all other options are exhausted, however, I am that guy who will be your last resort. I had spent some time focusing on paying work, so I was in a good financial spot to take the time off, and SOMEBODY needed to be there for my mother. Normally, that would have been Chad. He was the guy who knew comforting things to say. He spent his whole life, quite literally, doing volunteer work. Even as a child, he would help the elderly people around town with their gardening and chores.
Chad spent 9 years as an active Marine, and then became a firefighter. Nobody really thought we would be going down there to attend a funeral at the end of this trip. His O2 levels were a bit up and down, and his pulse was a bit high, but other than that, he seemed fine. So, when it was time for THE CHOICE, we told them to leave the tube in, and keep him breathing until his body could finish fighting off this horrible infection.
A few days after that decision, we celebrated his 14th wedding anniversary. That was the last time I had gone down to SC to see him, when he got married. To this day, it was the best wedding I've ever attended. The day after his anniversary, things started getting worse. His kidney function declined rapidly, and he became septic. His O2 levels went below 85, and stayed there. Just after choosing hope, and giving him a fighting chance, he quit fighting. The last time I went in to see him, they had an AED wired right up to him. That was when I knew it was over. Two nights later, the hospital was frantically calling my mother, trying to reach Chad's wife. She'd been staying with family that lived closer to the hospital, and they had no land-line, and poor cell reception. His wife had all the legal rights to information and decision-making, and they were supposed to share any news with her first. After being unable to reach her for several hours, they finally let my mother know that he had indeed passed.
I don't remember where I was for many of those moments in history that are supposed to stay with you forever. I do remember where I was when the Challenger blew up, when the 9/11 attacks happened (mostly because I was working at a place that had low flying planes in a holding pattern right over my head for hours), and I'll never forget when my mother got that news. It's an unbearable thing to watch someone that you love just... break. You want SO badly for life to be something other than what it is, and all you can do is stand there, just be there, and watch as someone's world comes crashing down around them.
Then I got to do it again, when we finally got ahold of his wife. She had a medical background, and was perhaps more prepared for the reality of the situation than the rest of us, but she was still unprepared. Nothing prepares you for having such a large part of your life just... cancelled.
Then we all got to do it again when we told the kids. It was like ripping off a bandage, then ripping out the stitches underneath it, then ripping off the scab. Their son, I think, had seen it coming. He certainly caught the mood in the room when everyone gathered around. Their daughter, who looks exactly like her father at a young age, did exactly what her father would have done. She went around and started comforting the people who seemed to be hurting more than she was. In the midst of a world of tears and grief, the little girl who had arguably lost the most was the one who was there for everyone else. I watched, shocked, buried in my own weird mix of grief, pride, and deja-vu.
I had known that my brother was well loved and respected in his little corner of the world, but it was overwhelming to see that love and respect on full display. I never got a chance to visit him at his home while he was alive, to see him really working in his element. He wasn't just a firefighter, he trained firefighters, and was Fire Marshall for many years. He was buried with full honors, and several hundred people came out to express their gratitude to us, for shaping him into the man that made such a difference in their lives.
We had a police and fire escort to transport his body from the hospital where he had been in Columbia, SC, back down to Hampton where he lived. I had never been a part of anything like it. They stopped traffic for us, even on the interstate. There were police cars and fire trucks blocking intersections for the entire drive, across nearly the entire state of South Carolina, with men and women standing at attention, or with their hands over their hearts. We left the hospital with a motorcade of two fire trucks, two pickup trucks from the fire department, one hearse, and two civilian vehicles carrying his immediate family. We arrived at the funeral home with over a dozen emergency and police vehicles, and countless numbers of fire and police personnell in their personal vehicles. Overwhelming is too small a word to describe how that felt.
The services were long, but seemed short. The two Chiefs from the departments he worked at each spoke at length of Chad's bravery, humor, service, and compassion. There were laughs and tears. There were so many people at the burial, I felt a little sad that it was impossible for people not to be trampling all over the other graves. They presented his wife and my mother with flags. They presented the children with his fire helmets. They retired his number, which he had taken when man who had been like a father to him in fire service passed unexpectedly from a heart attack a few years earlier. They did Last Call to Service over the radio, and over 100 people broke down weeping uncontrollably.
The local paper that announced my brother's death gave him nearly the entire front page. The death of Colin Powell was pushed to page 7.
I wasn't close to my brother. We seldom talked more than once or twice a year. We were, however, close in a way that not all siblings understand. We were three boys, raised by a single, working mother. I was the oldest, and because of that, was more of a parent than a brother to my little brothers for the early part of our lives. I got us up and off to school in the morning. I fed us on the days off from school. I signed permission slips, and decided which trouble in school was serious enough that mom had to go talk to somebody. I dealt with the bullies, the fights with friends, the heartbreaks. Growing up like that, you develop bonds that don't require constant communication to stay tight. There are no sibling rivalries when you all understand that you're working together to survive.
There's more to say, there's always more to say, but then, there's really nothing more that needs to be said. We grieve, we remember, we try to be there for each other when the loss seems unbearable. The clocks keep ticking, and life rolls on. The colors may seem a little more dull for a while, but maybe that's just because we've only had 4 days of sunshine in NY all summer. I tell myself what I told my neice and nephew... It isn't fair, but we have to deal with what life gives us, whether it's fair or not. Hopefully it's the worst thing we'll have to deal with in our lives, and living in a way that would make Chad as proud of us as we are of him is the best way to get through it.
Goodbye, little brother. Life trudges on, much as before, just with a little less laughter. You turned out to be the best of us, and now we're left to go on, wishing you were here.
💔
