The Phone Call

Can you come home?” my sister asked when I answered the phone.

 “What’s wrong?”

 “Brandon’s dead.”

 As the oldest child, it has always fallen to me to take care of my brother and sisters. My favorite chore was watching Tracy. She was a bright, inquisitive child full of laughter and love.

 When she was a teenager she came to me for advice about boys and sex. Sitting on a cushion to see over the steering wheel and dash of my car, we drove the back roads and side streets near Mom and Dad’s house when she was practicing driving to get her license. We went to rock concerts together and sat up long into the night when she had a problem or needed to talk. She watched my boys when I worked a second job or on rare nights when I went out with friends. When she got married she asked me to do her makeup and hair and help her find the right dress. I even made the bouquet she carried and the bouquets for her bridesmaids. We were inseparable even when my husband was stationed far away from home and kept in close contact.

 When Brandon was born, I lived in Louisiana, but I was the first person she called with the news. My baby sister had a baby boy and I saw him for the first time at Thanksgiving when he was still a sweetly scented, tiny, wide-eyed bundle of waving arms and kicking legs. He was just as precious and bright-eyed as Tracy had been when I saw her for the first time.

 My short vacation was just long enough to catch up on all the news and get to hold my nephew with a little time for my sister and me to get away for a few hours for a good long chat. She glowed with happiness and contentment.

 Two months later I got another phone call. Brandon was dead.

 It was late when I finally pulled into my parent’s driveway. I pulled off into the yard, slammed the gear shift into Park, got out of the car and ran across the yard and through the door my mother held for me. My snow-covered shoes slid across the tile entry and I stumbled across the carpet toward my little sister. She looked up. “Oh,” she said, “you made it. I’ll bet you’re tired.” Taking my coat she brushed away the melting snowflakes and laid it carefully across the arm of the sofa, smoothing the folds, flicking away a splash of dried mud. “Did you stop and get something to eat? Are you hungry?” I shook my head.

 Cold wind slashed through the space between us as my father kicked the snow from his shoes against the door frame and clattered into the house. He stood in the doorway. “Didn’t you bring any bags?”

 “I’ll get them later,” I told him, watching Tracy poke up the fire in the stove, knock off the ashes and place the iron back into the holder. She rubbed her arms and stared into the fire for a moment oblivious to the rest of us.

 “Would you like some cake or pie and some coffee?” My mother took my arm and led me through the dining room and into the kitchen.

 “I don’t drink coffee, Mom.”

 “There’s plenty.” She turned on the coffee maker. “And lots of pie. Sister Friend brought apple pie and I don’t remember who brought the peach pie or the chocolate cake.” She turned to the refrigerator and looked into the freezer. “There’s ice cream if you want it.” She put a gallon of vanilla on the counter. “You can heat the pie in the microwave.”

 Mom wandered past me, into the foyer and up the stairs. Dad followed. “Don’t forget to put away the ice cream,” he said.

 I went back into the family room. Tracy had fallen asleep in a chair facing the stove. Taking an afghan from my mother’s lounger, I draped it around her, carefully tucking in the edges and smoothing the warm hand crocheted wool over her tightly clenched fists.

 Dark circles hung like old drapes beneath her honey brown lashes. Feathery lines spread out from the corners of her eyes and a knife-edge line creased the smooth skin between her eyebrows. I laid down on the sofa and pulled another afghan over me, as I watched my little sister shift and mumble in her sleep through the night while the logs shifted and fell in a spray of sparks that woke the ash-covered embers into a brief comforting life.

 The next morning the snow was gone and a light drizzle dampened the frost rimed ground as we left the house.

 

As the minister spoke, Tracy took my hand, curling her fingers tightly around mine, her nails digging into my skin. She nodded as the minister spoke, her face calm and still. Her grip tightened on my hand as she looked up and past the black suited minister to the tiny white coffin behind him.

 When the service was over Tracy held my hand as she sat there looking at the empty stand. “I gave him CPR. His lips were so blue and cold and stiff. I still feel them,” she said as tears slipped down her cheeks. “I still feel them.”

 I followed the long procession out onto the highway south to the little country graveyard where Brandon would be buried. As they lowered his coffin into the ground at my sister’s feet, the icy drizzle turned to snow. Tracy dropped a rose into the gaping hole while everyone drifted silently away. I walked back toward the cars, said goodbye to my family and a couple friends and turned for one last look at Tracy before I got in the car and drove back to Tennessee.

 “I’m pregnant,” Tracy said when she called a month later. “Brandon sent him.”

It has been 2 days since my grandson Connor died. Time weighs me down and numbs my brain. I can't think. I don't want to think. I don't want anything, except for Connor to be alive, for all of this to be a hoax, a mind warp, an alternate reality, an aberration of this reality, my reality. I want Connor back.

And I want to hear from my son. I'd left messages for 2 days with no response. I was jealous of Beanie because David Scott returned her call and not mine.

Julie's dad called me this morning while I was passed out from lack of sleep and grief. I didn't hear the phone and I'm a light sleeper -- on a normal day. These have not been normal days. Mr. Larkin wanted to know if I had heard from David Scott or Julie. I hadn't. My first thought was they had dived into twin bottles and were on a binge. He was considering calling the police and reporting them as missing. My heart raced and then stopped. I wanted my son to be all right. I cannot lose anyone else.

I called Beanie to ask if she had heard from David again. No. She sent him a text message but he had not returned even that. Two days. No word. What could he be thinking? Where the hell was he and what was he doing? I called David Scott one more time, not even hoping the phone would be turned on this time. I waited for voice mail.

"Hello?"

It was David Scott. I should have known what he was doing, what he always does when he's in pain. He was hiding. Not communicating. Curling into an emotional ball around his pain and shutting down.

"Where the hell have you been?" I yelled.

As angry and worried as I was, I was happy to hear that petulant tone in his voice even as I told him not to yell at me, to moderate his tone.

Julie tried to throw herself off the balcony, to kill herself after having turned on everyone else, blaming them for killing her son. My son responds by hiding like an octopus pulling his tentacles and his amorphous bulk into as small a space as he can find. My daughter-in-law responds by cursing and lashing out at everyone and anyone who comes within her sight.

David Scott has been staying with a close friend, meeting with his sponsor and great grand sponsor (recovering alcoholic), and Julie has been in the hospital in the psych ward on a mandatory 72-hour watch because of her suicide attempt. No one knew what was going on. Now we know.

This has been a trying time for all of us and more so for my son and his wife because it is their child who has died. It doesn't help to know that Connor's cardiologist didn't know of our family history of a congenital heart murmur or that my father's youngest brother, a fraternal twin like Connor and Sierra, died when he was 10 months old of pneumonia complicated by his heart defect.

It may not have been Connor's heart. I still think the autopsy will show an aneurysm that burst while he slept. But it doesn't matter what caused his death. He is gone.

Everyone is blaming himself or herself and casting blame around like a hot potato. No matter what medical science will tell us, it will not assuage our grief. My 2-year-old grandson is dead and nothing, not even medical science, will bring him back. All we have left is questions with no answers and grief and my son and daughter-in-law are not dealing well with them. In spite of their ages, they are not equipped to deal with this. I am much older and, despite my seeming calmness in the face of this tragedy, I am not equipped to deal with this. I know there is a logical reason and I know that there is no reason, at least not a reason my heart or my aching soul will accept.

Death is never easy and I've had a lot of it to deal with this year with Mom dying in January and now Connor. Last year it was my half brother and a close friend. I expect to lose people, to lose family at this stage of my life, and yet I don't expect them to die. It is not logical; it is emotional, and I am very emotional right now. I doubt I will ever be un-emotional where this is concerned.

In the larger context, Dick Clark, the immortal Dick Clark who was hundreds of years old, has died today. In the end, even he was not immune to death's final embrace. So why do I feel like in the end it will be cockroaches, moths, and me left on this planet? I always thought it would be Mom.

It's Monday and I expect bad things to happen. It's Monday.

This morning brought some good news. My tax refund was deposited in my account 3 weeks earlier than expected. With the good comes the bad and this morning it came in the form of a phone call from my son David Scott. I could barely understand him he was crying so hard. His son, Connor James, was found dead this morning.

Connor wasn't in an accident and he didn't do drugs, unless you consider milk a drug. Connor was 2 years old and he was fine last night. This morning he was gone, lost to us and to his twin sister Sierra. She wants to know where Connor is and there are no words to help a 2-year-old understand that her womb companion, her brother is gone.

My son and his wife are devastated and I am thrown back nearly 30 years to the call that came to tell me my sister's son Brandon was dead. Brandon was 3 months old. He died of SIDS. His loss still touches us and his brothers, Ants and Cody, will never forget him even though Brandon was born first.

My son is devastated and wants someone to punish for his son's death. He wants to know where God was when his son was taken and why God allowed this to happen. David Scott wants vengeance.
There is no rhyme or reason to Connor's death. When the autopsy results come back we will know what happened in Connor's final moments, but nothing will ever help us understand why him, why my grandson, why my son's only son, why a child had to die, why Sierra's twin was chosen on this day of all days.

It doesn't help to know that thousands of children died last night and this morning and will die today and tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come. I don't know those children. I feel sad when any child dies, but this is personal. This death devastates my family, not some third world or privileged child anywhere but here.

Yes, I am angry. Yes, I understand that my grandson will never grow up and kiss a girl (or boy), will never go to prom or graduate high high school or college, get a degree, meet someone and marry, have children and grandchildren. All his tomorrows are null and void; they are gone.

Sierra doesn't understand where Connor is. Her days and nights and everything in between have been filled with her twin. What does her 2-year-old mind understand? What will she understand now? She will know a void in her life that can never be filled. Something will always be missing and she may not know what; it will be a Connor-shaped void, a much bigger void than the Connor-shaped void that fills me, my son, his mother, and all the people who knew and loved him, who will miss him now and all the days that follow.

I'm selfish. I want my children to be happy and for their children to be happy grow up and have happy children. Now all I can think about is the Christmas stocking I cross-stitched and finished 2 months ago for Connor. He'll never get to use it. He will never hang it on the mantelpiece every December and take it down Christmas morning filled with little gifts, fruit, nuts, or candy. I can't send it to my son because that is not a pain I want him to feel. He does not need tangible evidence of the future he and his son will never share. No, I'll pack it away and put it on a shelf and I will never look at it even though I will see it for the rest of my life without opening the box and taking it out.

My mother died 3 months ago on Friday 13th. My father died 5 years ago March 1st. In the interim, I have lost aunts, uncles, and close friends.

My grandson, Connor James Woodard, died April 16, 2012.

There are no words.