What would have happened if he had died that night? What if, while pacing in that small private waiting room, the doctor had walked in and told us they did everything they could and he was gone?
My mother probably would have cried, just as she really did that night. My father probably would have tried to attack the doctor in disbelief. Me, I would have run out of that stinking hospital and never looked back. How would we tell his sons that their Dad was dead? That he had run into a concrete wall while driving in a race earlier that Friday night and was so severely brain injured that he died en route to the hospital. He would be gone forever. He wouldn't be able to teach them how to build a car, how to drive a car, how to do anything that Dads teach their young sons. They would have to grow up without a father, only knowing him from their young mind's eye and our memories. They would soon forget the sound of his voice and the comfort of his hugs.
Feeling Overwhelmed...
We would have to arrange for his funeral. How do you do that for a 28-year-old man? How do you look at your brother's dead body, his soul no longer there? We would have seen him in the emergency room that night and there would have been silence, instead of the beeps as air was forced in and out of his lungs. He would have been lying there, still in his driving suit cut to shreds without his glasses. That would look odd - he needed his glasses to see.
The overwhelming feeling of disbelief and terror would have overtaken my family. Instead of having the warm hand of my brother to hang onto for reassurance, there would only be the coldness of death. My brother no longer there, and yet his body still in front of me. He would have a small trickle of blood running down his face from where his glasses cut him and his face would be swollen from the fracture to his left orbit. He would be an ashen color with disconnected tubes and wires hanging from his lifeless body.
Everything to Live For...
I think I would scream, "This cannot be happening! This is my big brother - he is strong and healthy! He has everything to live for, two small boys that need him, damn it!" Even through that, he would still lie there, eyes closed and bruised, not there to help me through my life anymore. Not there to tell me to keep my mouth shut and everything will get better, just as he did when we were kids.
Love of Racing...
We would have known what killed him - his love of racing and the rush of driving that damn race car. They would come for his body and we would go home without him. We would cry and mourn and make funeral plans. Picking out a casket and planning a service so his friends could come and pay their respects. We would have to pick out dark clothing, as that is what mourning families wear, dark clothing. I don't think anyone keeps an outfit of dark clothing just in case their brother dies, so I would have to go shopping. That wouldn't seem right while my brother was all alone in the morgue waiting for the funeral home to come and pick up his battered body for the next phase in the death process.
Surviving the Funeral...
What would he have liked for a funeral, how would we know? I never asked my brother what he was looking for in a funeral. I just knew he wouldn't want that elderly lady that played the organ at our great-grandmother's funeral. I remember how we laughed at how horrible she was. He wouldn't want that - well maybe he would, it was funny.
I suppose we would have guessed, all wrong, at what he would have liked. He never had any suits, so I think I would have gotten a new driving suit to bury him in - that I know he would have liked for sure. We would have to bring a bag with his clothes to the funeral home and they would dress him for the final time. We would have to find a pair of glasses because he wouldn't look right without them. Not that anyone looks right in death.
I guess we would have to spend all day at the funeral home, in one of those lines where people come up to you and say how sorry they are and how they can't believe this happened. We would probably cry and hug everyone, even some people that I know we wouldn't hug under any other circumstances. Would we have his boys there to say good-bye? I guess we would have to consult a doctor and get an opinion. I would have my daughter there. She loved her uncle very much and was very close to him and his boys. She would have had to see him one last time.
Someone would probably speak about him, and a Reverend would probably pray for him. Maybe we would laugh some; maybe we would just sit in silence. We would only be "the three of us" now where it had always been "the four of us" - Mom, Dad, Chad and me. I guess these things would have been going through my mind.
Crying Comes Later...
We would have to go to a cemetery and bury him - one last good-bye. More praying, I'm sure and lots more crying. People would come to the house, bringing the usual "funeral foods" and everyone would say, "Eat, you have to eat something," and we would thank them and it would be over. Everyone would go home. The three of us would be left with me being the baby of the family and not at all ready for what was ahead. It would probably take months to get his life closed up and put away, taken care of: money, house, belongings, cars. We would try to stay close to his boys, because we'd love them no less now that their Dad was gone.
Only later would we cry and understand why. No more son, brother, father, uncle, cousin, grandson or friend. No more phone calls at work telling me it was my favorite brother. No more arguing or listening to his obnoxiously loud voice. No more knowing he was just a phone call away to be there for my daughter or me. No more races to watch him drive. Only then would I understand the meaning of all those tears.
Time Goes By...
Time would go by and we would probably learn to deal with his death, even though it was too soon, even though things like this aren't supposed to happen. My Mom would go on with her life, pick up eventually and move on without her son. I don't know how she would do it, because I am always the one that is stuck. My father would also somehow make it through, although I know he would go about it differently. We all have our own ways of dealing with tragedy.
That's what it would have been, a tragedy - people would whisper it when my dad went to his local haunt for coffee in the mornings, "What a tragedy, lost his only son." But I am sure he would tell a tale about some race and my brother would live through those stories. Pictures, videos, stories, his boys, his friends - those would be the things we had left of him.
What Did Happen...
This, of course, didn't happen to our family. My brother didn't die that night. Sometimes I look at death as "short and sweet" - it comes, you deal with it and life goes on. Nothing lingers other than the good things that eventually show themselves.
I still have my brother here in body, but only sometimes in spirit. His brain injury left him sort of here. He still remembers some of our childhood. He still is there if I need him at the other end of the phone. But as much as it hurts to tell him this, and I never have, it is not the same brother. It's a new brother, one my therapist has told me dozens of time, if not more, that I have to learn to love now and adjust to.
I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if he had died in his accident. I have a different opinion every time I think about it. His boys are adjusting to their "new" Dad. I think as they near teenage years, some parts of their Dad may be embarrassing as most things are at that age. I don't want them to be ashamed of their Dad, but I can't help what has happened to him and I can't change it. I am still the one telling them those "remember when" stories about their Dad, just like I would have had to do if he died that night instead of being in a very long coma with a severe brain injury.
I guess what I have found is that my brother did die that night in that race car. I last saw him driving away in his pickup truck with his race car trailer in tow. I didn't say anything out of the ordinary, maybe good luck, maybe not - I don't remember. My daughter was with him all that day, the last day of his "life". We just didn't get to have the funeral and mourn like all the other families that experience this magnitude of loss.
People think we are blessed, and we are in a way. But in some ways we are cursed, my brother, too. We are still "the four of us" and we are going to stay that way, no matter what. Things just change, sometimes it's bearable and sometimes it's unbearable. I guess it's how you choose to look at it.
This material is provided by:
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