Leaving Home

We were just finishing dinner when the phone rang. My mom answered. The call was from one of the counselors at the summer camp where my brother Brian was staying. He said that Brian had been taken to the hospital and told her that she and my dad should go to the emergency room right away. That was all he would tell them. Mom made a quick call to Mrs. Stanhope, our neighbor, and asked her to come over and stay with me a while, and they rushed out.

I was twelve, my brother had just turned fourteen. He had been really excited about going away to "Adventure Camp" for two weeks that summer; white water rafting, rock climbing and water skiing were just some of the things the brochure promised for the campers. Brian loved that kind of stuff, anything that was exciting and a little dangerous was sure to attract him. My mom didn't want him to go at first. Like any mom, she was worried. Eventually my dad intervened, saying it seemed like it was all pretty well supervised and it would do Brian good to get out of the house and have some fun. Together they wore mom down and she gave her consent.

My brother and I were growing up together, but we weren't all that close, really. We fought a lot and didn't like to do many of the same things. My parents house was small so we shared a room, our twin beds parallel to one another with about five feet of hardwood floor between them. I got the feeling he resented having me underfoot so much. That's why what occurred between us the night he went to the hospital was so confusing to me. I still think about it.

I wanted to wait up for my parents to get home that night, but Mrs. Stanhope sent me to bed around eleven o' clock. I was more tired than I thought, I fell asleep right away. In the middle of the night I woke up and went to the bathroom. When I came back to our small bedroom Brian was there. I hadn't heard my parent's car pull into the garage. He was sitting on the side of his bed, between his bed and mine. His feet were on the floor, his hands clasped together between his knees. He was looking down, his longish blond hair hanging over his eyes. The moon was shining brightly and I hadn't turned on any lights when I got up, so I could see him clearly. He didn't look up when I walked in the room.

"Holy crap Brian, you scared the heck out of me!" I said when I saw him there. He didn't respond. I stopped just inside the doorway, "When did you get back from the hospital?" I asked.

"I'm sick," was his answer.

"Is that why you had to go to the hospital? 'Cuz you were sick?" I continued. He just kept staring at the floor. "Well, we'd better go downstairs and get mom and dad and tell them you still don't feel too good, don't you think?"

"No, they can't do anything." He looked up at me for a brief instant, then back down again. "I'm scared, Joey," he said.

My brother saying that got me scared too, because it was something that he would never have admitted to me, not in a million years. I walked over to my bed, not between our beds, but on the opposite side, away from where Brian sat. I looked at the alarm clock on my nightstand, it was two fifteen in the morning. I just wanted to get back into bed and not to have started this conversation at all. I stretched out on my back, staring up at the ceiling.

"If you're sick why won't you get mom and dad? They'll be mad since it's the middle of the night, but if you're sick....."

"I can't explain.....look.....I know this is weird but.....can I come over and lay on your bed with you?" he asked, "I just think I'd feel better if I could do that right now."

His request was the last thing I expected, and it frightened and confused me even more. I couldn't figure out why he would want to crowd together on my small single bed. "No," I answered, "you can't. What if I catch what you have?"

"No, it's not like that," he answered. "My stomach was really hurting bad a little while ago but it doesn't hurt anymore. Now I just feel kind of strange. I think I just need to sleep but I want to sleep over there." He looked over at me and tried to smile but his lips were trembling. I realized he was close to crying. "Please."

I hadn't seen my brother cry in years, and he never would have asked me to do anything like this if he wasn't really frightened. The prospect of me blabbing to his friends about what a wuss he had been would have kept him suffering in silence. It was his obvious, utter vulnerability that swayed me; I knew then that I'd never be able to rat him out to his friends.

"All right," I told him, "but just for a little while until you're feeling better."

"Thanks." He said. He slid off of his bed and I scooted over as far as I could on my small twin mattress to make room for him. We both laid there on our backs, above the covers, our arms at our sides. Just before I fell back asleep I felt him place his right leg across both my legs, just below my knees.

When I woke up the next morning I was still laying on my back, the sun streaming through the window. I could still feel the pressure of Brian's leg across my knees, but when I looked to my left nobody was there.

I went down to the kitchen, my father was at the table, drinking a cup of coffee. He had on the same clothes he had gone to the hospital in the night before. He looked up at me, dark circles under his eyes, stubble on his cheeks.

"Hey dad." I said, "Where's mom? Where's Brian?"

My father looked back down at the kitchen table. "Joey," he said, "your brother and some friends went rock climbing at camp yesterday. They went without telling anyone and without any supervision. Your brother fell. He hurt himself real bad. He had internal injuries. Bleeding. He.....he died a little after two o' clock this morning." My dad starting crying then, silently, still looking down at the table.

I felt the world sort of tilt away from me. Everything in the kitchen looked like it was there, but not really there. I couldn't seem to comprehend what I had just heard.

I tried to argue away the reality of what my father had told me. "But dad that can't be right," I started to say, "I just saw him last......" and I couldn't finish. I could see by the devastation on my father's face that I hadn't misheard him. There was no point insisting to him that my brother had been in our bedroom early that morning. As real as it had all been, it just couldn't have happened. I walked out of the kitchen, stunned.

Twenty years have passed since the night my brother died. I've had a lot of time to think about what happened in our room that night. Though I felt the next morning that seeing Brian was something that couldn't have been real, I've modified my opinion somewhat since then. Though I'm not a philosopher or theologian, I'll tell you what I think. As advanced a society as we like to think we are, the transition between life and death is still an unknown. When that time does arrive, though, particularly when it arrives for someone who should have lots of time left, I believe that it can be, for lack of a better word, confusing. I think that my brother didn't understand that he was dying. Brian's soul, or his life-force or whatever you want to call it, when it was released from his physical body, went searching for familiar surroundings. And what it found was his bedroom in his house. I just happened to be there at the time. Though he didn't fully understand he was dying, his remaining consciousness was aware that something very substantial was happening to him, and he was afraid. Again, I just happened to be there, and in his fear he turned to me for comfort. I wish I had more fully understood what was happening at the time, I would have tried to do more for him. I only hope that ultimately, despite my childish misgivings, I was able to provide him the comfort he sought. Perhaps someday I'll find out.