In Remembrance

I cried again recently as I stood over his grave. Looking down at his headstone, I read the inscription, 1952-1991. It was shortly before his fortieth birthday when he died. I asked him out loud, “Oh, David. What happened?”




David’s gravesite is located on a high hill overlooking the town we grew up in. From where he is buried you can look out over the part of town where the schools are that he and I had walked to daily until that last summer. You can see the athletic fields where I used to help him put on his catchers gear when he played Little League. School is out for another summer and the late afternoon sun warmed the quiet neighborhoods. I could hear an occasional boy or girl's laugh or yell as it floated up from the homes below.



It was years later that I pieced together what took place following our leaving high school. After we graduated we both entered the U.S. Army. I was older than David and was in Vietnam when he was drafted. I went into the service to avoid the new draft, the “lottery” the Selective Service had instituted in 1967. I was home going to a technical college when he returned from his tour in Vietnam. He came home emotionally scarred and an alcoholic. I saw him a couple of times in the years that followed. Once, as he was walking by my home with his kids and once we ran into each other outside of Walmart. Both times, after we had talked, I walked away feeling empty inside.




I went to his funeral in 1991. He had at one time turned his alcoholic life around and had become a councilor of alcohol addiction at the local VA hospital. I remembered in our conversation outside of Walmart he said that he didn’t feel that there was much to look forward to in his life. He had seen what happens to some of the old alcoholic veterans and their never ending cycles.



He was divorced and living by himself. He used to call his widowed mother every day until one day he didn’t. She got worried and went over to his home. She found him sitting in his car, inside the closed up garage, with the car’s engine running. He was dead.



When we were kids, it seemed David was fearless outside of his home because he was away from his usually drunken and sullen parents. I was asked once, if I was afraid of David because of his fearless behavior. I wasn't afraid of him as much as afraid for him. I felt like I had to be watchful as his big brother. Looking back, I don't think he was sexually abused but I know he was abused physically and mentally. At home, he had to rely on his older sister or his own independent and inventive nature to cope with his home life. Although I was older than he, when we were together, he usually took the lead, with me holding back to protect him in any way I could. I felt powerless most of the time and in the end I was.