My brother, Eddie, was killed in the late spring of 1971. Mom's tea rose bushes bloomed early that year just like in 1965 when I was born. Eddie almost got to see them. An emotionally disturbed resident of Rosemont Nursing Home in Hagerstwon, MD, where Eddie lived, forced a bar of soap down his throat. He was supposed to move back home that weekend. Staff got the object out before he choked to death, but not before deadly chemicals made their pungent way into his lungs. He died later that night, alone, while mom and dad made the long trek to the hospital.
Eddie didn't always hate Rosemont. At first it was an ordeal to convince him to come home for weekend visits. Rosemont was populated with folks like Eddie, people who suffered from nueromuscular disorders such as his Willie Prader Syndrome. The community members were extremely competent, gentle and kind. Slowly the faces of Rosemont's workforce and inhabitants changed. Staff with years of experience were let go in favor of inept college kids who could be paid far less. New types of residents were added to the population. People with forensic and oppositional behavior issues joined the mix. Staff often neglected and sometimes abused patients. Eddie wanted to come home. Irresponsible employees ushered a gaggle of boys down the corridor to the communal showers. They weren't supervising the bunch and that's when Eddie was attacked.
I remember fragments of his funeral, like a collage of loss. When I pulled my chin over the edge of his casket it looked like he was breathing. I begged mom not to bury him alive. He was dressed in his older brother's dark gray suit and his fluff of platinum hair wept against the white, satin pillow beneath his head. There seemed to be room for another body next to his fragile frame. He didn't stand a chance against his assailant. And there were flowers everywhere, refusing to be sad.
Eddie was buried in Shady Pines Cemetery back when you were still allowed to watch them lower the casket into the grave. I have a picture of mom standing beside his swell of earth softened by baskets of flowers laid on their sides. She wore a periwinkle dress over her ample body, belly swollen with her last birth of twins, and a faithful strand of pearls around her mole-ridden neck.
There was a giant clock at the entrance, fashioned out of shrubbery with hands of petunias and begonias. The grounds keeper could change the time with seasons of daffodils, verbena and mums. I wondered what time it would be that winter when most everything shriveled in on itself and if Eddie would finally see the tea roses that bloomed early in the spring of 1971.
