A Wounded Heart, Part 2

July 15, 2005

(The continuation of the story as I remember it…Part 1 can be read here.)

My aunt ran out of the room to the phone. I was on her heels, shaking my head, saying over and over, “He’s not dead. He’s not dead.”

She picked up the phone to call for help. Desperate for nothing to be wrong, I kept hanging up the phone as my aunt was trying to call. Each time she dialed, I’d hang up again. Finally, she held me far enough away so she could complete the call.

The next thing I remember is my aunt carrying my brother out the front door. We heard the emergency vehicles, sirens blaring, coming toward us. As the fire engine turned the corner and approached the house, my aunt ran out to the road and handed my brother to the first fire fighter she saw. He took my brother in his arms and they drove away. I never saw my brother again.

I don’t remember anything else from that afternoon.

Later that night, my parents were sitting in my aunt and uncle’s dining room. By this time, word had gotten out that Daniel had died. People from our church began arriving to offer their support.

As I watched my parents sitting in the dining room, I huddled behind the stairs in the living room. I could see everything that was happening and the most significant thing to me at the time was seeing my dad cry.

It was the first time I had ever seen him cry. As I sat there, alone, in the corner, hidden by shadows, I remember thinking I must have done a very bad thing to make my dad cry. After all, I thought, if I hadn’t hung up the phone, my aunt would have been able to call and my brother would not have died.

And I didn’t realize it at the time, but somewhere in my 3-year old little brain, “I did a bad thing,” became “I am bad.”

It is these three little words that have been the filter through which most everything else in my life has been measured; they are what I have unknowingly been fighting against and yet at the same time, embracing as “truth.”

What’s so tragic is that my brother’s death was not my fault at all—he died of SIDS long before my aunt even walked in the room—but no one told me that until 10 years later…

Read Part 3 here.

Category: Deep Thoughts

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