Death of a Family

     I've been trying to remember to call my mother at least four times a day since my step-father has been hospitalized.  I think she forgets that I have called within a minute or so, but I persist in calling.  However, when I called yesterday afternoon, another familiar voice greeted my "Hello".  It was My Little Brother.  He had come not just to visit her, but for a tour of The Memory Unit, and in particular, the room that my mother will occupy in a few days.  He seem positively delighted to hear my voice, and he spoke with a lilt and also some relief.  Big Sister was on the line.  The Big Sister he had depended on when we were children.

                                   Me and My Little Brother - Happy Days


     He's not generally this happy to hear from me.  We don't speak that often.  But the current health crisis precipitated by my step-father's stroke and my mother's precipitous decline into a deeper dementia have brought us together again.  Yet, although we are both adults, having lived many decades apart since our youth, we are still, sometimes, Big Sister and Little Brother.  I was literally the Big Sister until he suddenly shot up past me like Jack's Beanstalk to nearly six feet.  I can't remember when that happened.  Like so many things.

     For years, I have tried to understand the affect my father's death had on me.  It's only since I've entered psychoanalysis that I've begun to get a fuzzy understanding of how his death might have affected my brother.  We hardly talk about "Daddy" at all.  I'd like to, but I think it's too painful for him.  Or maybe, he just doesn't want to talk to me about it.  You see, I believe my Little Brother has been angry at me all these years.  I let him down, and I wasn't aware of it.  There's nothing I could have changed, but my father's death resulted in an unexpected casualty -  the death of our family.