“Is this your brother?” (Day 2, Part 1)

03 Apr 2013 2 Comments

by Denise in Death Tags: , , , , , , ,

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 – Philip still hadn’t called me back. I still didn’t think anything of it. I figured I was on his mental to-do list. But I wanted to talk to him, so by afternoon I called and this time, I left him a message: “Well, I know you’re not dead in a ditch ‘cause someone would’ve called me by now. Call me.”

He was not in a ditch; at least I got that right.

Later that night, home, alone, I turned on “Lost.” It’s available on instant-watch through Netflix. I didn’t much like “Lost,” but I’d been watching it with Natalie during the summer. When she left for Rutgers and watched a few episodes without me, I figured I’d let it go. But I was afraid something really good and mind-blowing would happen and I would miss the Big Point after all the hours I’d spent watching this crap. We were, after all, up to season six. And much as I swore I’d never forget what scene I was watching when I got The Call, forget I did. Juliet and Michael were on the beach, I remember, but that narrows it down to exactly nothing. It’s Lost, for God’s sake. Everyone is always on the beach.

But the first time the phone rang, it was not The Call. It was Natalie. When I answered, she was choked and panicked and saying, “Mom, mom.” Since she often called choked and panicked and saying, “Mom, mom,” I did what I always do.

“Natalie. Natalie. Breathe.”

“But mom…”

“Natalie. Take a breath. I can’t understand you when you’re like this. Take a breath and tell me what happened.”

Nothing unusual about the silence that followed. Nothing unusual, either, in the abrupt change in her voice when she said, “Mom, I have to go.”

“Oh no you don’t. You’re not hanging up like this. Tell me what happened.”

“Mom. I have to go.”

“Okay, okay. But call me back and let me know what’s going on.”

On my end, I thought her roommate walked in or someone started pounding on the door and that she would head for the nearest empty hall, stairway, bathroom or closet, wherever she could find somewhere to talk to me in private. It’s happened before. Uncontrollable weeping gets controllable real fast when you’re afraid one of your peers might catch you doing it.

On her end, she hung up, holding the photocopy of Philip that the four policemen who were standing in her room had given her when she opened the door and found them standing there. “Is this your brother?” they’d asked. A question harmless enough, except when it isn’t. Except when you realize it’s a question you’ve heard your entire life but you probably weren’t going to be hearing very often any more. And since she realized I didn’t know, she figured she’d give me a few more minutes peace before I woke to the nightmare that would become my new reality.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

What the hell?? (Day 1)

01 Apr 2013 3 Comments

by Denise in Death Tags: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012 – Sometime around 4:00 in the afternoon, while I was at work, Natalie called. “Mom,” she said, “Philip was supposed to meet me for lunch, but he didn’t show. What the hell??” “Oh,” I answered, “That’s weird. Well, you call him and I’ll call him and whoever hears from him first’ll tell him to call the other one.”

“What if he’s dead?”

I laughed. He’s not dead, I told her. She is a worrier; I am not. At least when it comes to my kids. I am the only parent I know who handed over the car keys and didn’t then picture my children splattered all over the road. Money, getting fat, dying without a significant other – these are the things I sometimes torture myself about. But my kids – I have faith in them, in their well-being. That might sound odd, worrying about the small stuff, but not my kids, who are the Big Stuff. Like, the REALLY Big Stuff. The Biggest Stuff EVER. But it’s not odd, not at all. It is precisely because of their Big-ness that I do not worry. I wouldn’t know how to picture my life without them, any more than I could picture my life without air, without the sun or the moon or the stars. All of which are always there, whether I can see them or not.

Whether I can see them or not.

I see no irony in this, in spite of what happened. Worrying prevents nothing. It just makes you miserable before the inevitable.

Besides, it’s Philip we’re talking about. My calm, well-adjusted, feet-on-the-floor, happy kid. Why I thought “calm” or “well-adjusted” or “feet-on-the-floor” or “happy” equaled “not dead” is probably because I was none of those things, most particularly when I was his age. And if I could survive my adolescence, which was dangerously unhappy, and included what I consider to be a serious attempt at suicide, then of course he could. He would.

Assumption is not a mistake I will easily make again. But I was living in my final 30 hours of assuming that that (and we all think we’re immune to those thats, reality to the contrary) is Something That Happens to Other People.

I hung up with Natalie and called my son. I knew enough not to leave a message.  Natalie, in particular, gets irritated with the time it takes to listen to a voicemail asking her to call me when the “Missed Call – Mom” message pretty much says the same thing.

She has a point.

I didn’t think anything when Philip didn’t call back. I called him again that night. Still no answer. At 11:02 I sent him a text. I know it was 11:02 because it’s still in my phone with all of our other texts from the last few months. The ones I hadn’t deleted, that is. I delete old texts because I first owned a computer when hard drives were measured in MGs, and deleting was what I did to make room. Besides, it seemed cleaner or something not to have stuff hanging around.

I no longer think like that.

Anyway, the text read, “Hey. Where are you? Call me or something.”

See, my world was still intact. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? If you’re child is dead and you don’t know it, does the world still make sense?

© 2013 Denise Smyth

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