I knew it. I knew it.
“Julie, come home now.”
“It's okay, Dad, just tell me, I’m here with my friends – what is it?”
As I type this now, a junior high school English teacher in my head is telling me it needs to be a question mark –what is it? But that is not how I said it – it was a flat “what is it” because I didn’t need to ask – I knew. I knew it. “Julie, come home now.”
Back seat, Tom’s car. I guess Rick and Steve were with - maybe Jill - I just don’t recall. Gotta get home, gotta get home. Gonna be bad. Gonna be real bad. We drove north on highway 61 paralleling the old tracks from Forest Lake to Wyoming. Gonna be bad gonna be real bad. Somewhere deep inside my chest was the train making the steady rhythm. High anxiety has its physical effects in people differently, I have learned, and mine is the “pins and needles” goose bumps feeling on a certain part of my legs. That is where all my anxiety goes – and the back seat of Tom’s grey Honda CRX had turned into a panic room complete with red interior. Gonna be bad gonna be real bad.
Bolting from the car, up the steps, grabbing the screen door, moving though the passage of half opened screen door and half opened main door – a threshold I have glided over without thought hundreds of times before - is now a passage of permanence I can never undo. Dad’s words met my face. “Scott died.”
I stood in the door frame – an air exchange of bitter January wind to warm living room cyclone of reality. Tom and others gathered behind me. And there it was – so quick, so uncontrollable. Out of this eighteen-year-old body whose mannerisms mimic her teenage peers in exaggerated pose , this sister-to-no-one formed her face into a smile with face tightly pulled, mouth corners up, and teeth, and said, “Oh, of course he did!” complete with eye roll and cluck of tongue.
I don’t recall what was said next. I don’t. I don’t recall the smile slowly unfolding itself into a look of horror, shock. Pure stun.
“How did your brother die?” is a question I do welcome. I have my short version, the “you are just being polite – we aren’t going to be that close so keep it short” version. And my long version, “I really like you and will take care to tell the whole thing” version. I’ve changed some words over the years but it’s the same yarn. The bad feeling that wells up in my chest when I tell it usually isn’t about the grief. It’s the pure embarrassment and shame of the sister who smiled when she learned that her brother died. Who does that?
Soon after, I had observed that some people, when they received bad news, immediately hold their hand up to their mouth. Aha – that will be my cover, I told myself, to prevent this major faux pas from ever occurring again. I would learn to instantly cover my mouth with my hand (do they teach this stuff in acting classes?) if I were to ever encounter such horrible news again.
In the last five years as I have shared this feeling – more intimate and risky than the story of Scott’s death itself - people have responded to my embarrassment with the commonality of it. “Oh yeah, that’s common.” “It’s pure disbelief going on in your mind and the facial expression to match.” “Totally normal reaction.”
Oh, really? Now I feel like the end of a long awaited blockbuster “The Mystery of the Missing Widget” when the characters learn the simplicity of the hiding place all along. Credits are rolling, theater is emptying and I’m still holding the empty popcorn box and sweaty soda staring at the screen. What? I had been clueless the whole time. All of that grief and self -hatred over a physical reaction that I considered unforgivable was totally natural? It’s amazing what the mind can do.
The next frame in the movie of my memory is my mom taking my hand, our forearms touching, tight grip, pulling me down to the couch: “it’s just you and me now. It’s just you and me now.” I had never heard her voice so high-pitched, and wobbly, so immersed in pain that it ripped my heart into two pieces. One piece was raw, red pain that I could not fathom. It was quickly covered up by the second piece: rage, anger, depression and an explicit determination to protect what was left around me. Only time and the caretaking mind would peel back the layers and begin to sort out the raw, the red, and the truth.
