Broken

It's Sunday. I'm at the office, trying to make a dent in the piles. Also trying to keep my mind even partially off of the latest death of someone I love.

It's not supposed to be like this. I mean, I get that the parents of us 40-somethings are gonna die, even when they were in great health and all that. It's not easy, whether it's my own dad or that of a dear friend, but I do get it. It's the Circle of Life 'n' Shit™.

But what's this bull$%!* with friends and the siblings of friends dying in their 30s and 40s?

For me, it started about 2 months ago with the death of a (high school/temple) youth group friend's brother after a 5 year battle with cancer (of which I was unaware). I would see the friend and her family at temple on holidays and the occasional Friday night, and the friend and I would make noises about making plans to get together that never materialized. I only knew the brother vaguely; he was younger and joined our youth group when I was a senior/co-president and the sister was a junior and more actively involved. There were no other siblings.

About 3 weeks ago, I learned that another high-school/youth group friend lost a sibling. This time, it was an older sister, the same age as Never-Blogging Sister Ju, and she had lived with Type I diabetes from as far back as I can remember. Her transplanted kidney (donated by her sister/my friend a couple of years ago) gave out and the rest of her organs ultimately failed from the ravages of the disease. She was only 46. NBSJ and the deceased were Sunday-school and public-school classmates; they were friendly but not close. The mother of these two (there's also an older brother) was also a friend of our family. She was involved with the temple board, as was my dad, and she and Father Ju gabbed and strategized together a lot in the years when they served together. The sisters had lived in NYC for many years and the parents moved to Florida a number of years ago but, again, I would see them at holidays and always enjoyed these visits.

These two deaths weren't terribly close to me, but they still struck a painful chord.

At 11:15 last night (Saturday night), I got a call from my mother. She had called the previous morning as she headed out of town with friends for the weekend, so I knew this wasn't just a "Hey-I'm-home-where-are-you?" sort of call when I picked up immediately. "I have terrible news," she said. "Mrs. Marshall called tonight. I'm sorry, honey, but Pedro is dead."

It's just not ... possible. Pedro? Dead? At 45, he was the oldest of the Marshalls' four sons. Only 8 or 9 years ago, the next oldest of the brothers -- my age and peer -- had died after a second bout with Hodgkin's lymphoma. (The first bout was successfully beaten, in keeping with the statistics, when we were in high school.) Pedro had taken brother Garrett's death particularly hard, finding himself unable to function and using alcohol and drugs to cope. When Pedro didn't show up to the second-youngest brother's wedding a year or so later, we learned he had been hospitalized. No details were given, but over the subsequent years Pedro confided that he was battling mental illness and had attempted to take his own life. For a while he stopped drinking and we knew he was in and out of treatment programs, transitional housing, therapy, and trying various psych0pharmac0logical cocktails. In the past couple of years I saw him drinking at family gatherings and knew that he had been unable to hold a job. Still, I knew he was taking medication for his illness and believed he was trying to take responsibility for himself and his disease. He was always incredibly sweet and, despite declining to stay in direct contact with anyone but his immediate family, I knew he cared deeply for me and my family. When we were together, he would often tell people that I was his sister, "or as close to a sister" as he had ever had, because we each grew up with siblings of our own gender and our families had always been so close.

In the years since my dad died, Pedro would tell and retell my favorite stories about his friendship with my dad when we were growing up, most memorably a tale of watching my dad work in the garden: Father Ju was working up a good sweat, tending to his beloved tomato plants. Pedro told him, "Mr. Ju, your garden isn't as big as my Grampy Marshall's garden." When my dad was noncommittal, digging, weeding, and turning soil, Pedro said, "Mr. Ju, your tomato plants aren't as tall as my Grampy Marshall's tomato plants." Dad was turning red, perspiring, shaking his head, working away, huffing heavily. Pedro went on, "Mr. Ju, your tomatoes don't taste as good as my Grampy Marshall's tomatoes." And just when the top of my dad's head was about to blow off, little Pedro jumped up and said, "Mr. Ju, I love you," gave dad a big hug around the legs, and ran off to play.

Mrs. Marshall told my mom last night that the cause of death had not yet been determined, but that he had died "in his sleep" and had looked "peaceful." Of course, I can't be sure that he took his own life, but I can't help feeling reasonably certain that if he didn't do it purposefully, it's probably not too much of a stretch to guess that he may have accidentally hastened his own death through confusion due to his illness and meds and/or unadvisable consumption of alcohol with prescription psych0troprics.

In any case, how does a parent cope with the devastating loss of not just one child but now two? How do the remaining brothers cope with becoming two rather than three, much less four. Not that it really matters, but what does a surviving brother say when asked, "Who's the oldest?" or "How many siblings do you have?"

I remember, in college, one friend of mine would respond to the question of how many kids were in her family more or less as follows: "I'm second to youngest of four. I have two older brothers and I had a younger sister who died as an infant." Honestly, I always thought that was sort of weird since the youngest died so young. My friend had really always been the youngest, for all intents and purposes, I thought, so why even bring up this information that was, well, awkward for everyone. Now, looking back, I think that it is incredibly special that she included that deceased baby as a member of her family ... because she was. No matter how long that child was in their lives, they had opened their hearts to her and her brief life forever altered them.

Two brothers now are dead. Two of my brothers -- as close as I have to brothers -- are now dead. Their lives, as well as their premature deaths, have forever altered me. My heart can't sustain any more.

Posted by cynical at August 10, 2008 05:04 PM