~Agatha Christie
We were just sitting there in the dark when she started to sob, deep shaking sobs of pain and years of hurt. As far as I could tell they were coming out of the blue, I hadn't said anything in hours, I don't even know if she knew I was awake, but she started talking.
"I was here at the time, just drinking at a bar with my rich bastard boy friend. I went outside to check a voice-mail and I had eleven missed calls. They were all from my brother, I have four younger brothers, I'm the oldest. I'm the oldest by five years, I basically raised them all myself since my parents got divorced when I was ten."
I didn't bother interrupting her, I just kept listening.
"The message said that my brother was in the hospital, he was in a coma and that they weren't sure if he was going to wake up. So my boyfriend put me on a plane and the next thing I knew I was in a hospital in LA, watching my brother have seizures in his hospital bed. He was twenty five and had just gotten home from Iraq. He was apparently really depressed and no one told me. I was so upset that no one told me."
She broke off into tears again. I don't know if she was even aware of my presence.
"My dad was there, and my other brothers, but they had to escort my dad out of the hospital because he had a nervous breakdown. Earlier that morning he had been yelling at my brother that he wasn't in Iraq anymore and he had to get his life together, he had to man up and start being responsible.
"My brother was diagnosed with PTSD and he couldn't sleep because he kept having dreams about what happened over there. The Army was sending him Prozac in the mail but no one was checking up on him. He was very depressed and drinking heavily. All he wanted to do was sleep, so he took some Tylenol PM. The nurses kept asking us if we knew what it could be that he could have taken to make him so unresponsive. He started having multiple heart attacks and flat lining. They used the defibrillator on him four times. They told us that they couldn't use it anymore or they would kill him."
I felt a stab of pain in my stomach and started to cry as well. So many conflicting feelings were swirling in my mind, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. She continued.
"I had to sign a paper, since my dad was gone, that said that they couldn't do anything more for him. I had to sign a paper saying that my brother was going to die. They told me they had never seen a man so young and so unresponsive. He kept having seizures and heart attacks and there was nothing we could do but watch.
"The next thing I knew he was dead, they pulled a sheet over his face and started bringing me all of these papers to sign. Then I was planning the funeral, picking out a casket and flower arrangements. I didn't even think about grieving because I was so focused on the event planning side, making sure everything would go off without a hitch. I was trying to be strong for my brothers.
"My four surviving brothers were the Pall-bearers and Ryan, the youngest, collapsed on the way up the aisle. He couldn't take it. He just fell on his knees and the casket fell with him and he started bawling. My uncle had to get up and help them the rest of the way.
"I never talk about this. I never had the chance to properly grieve. This happened five years ago and it feels like no time has passed. It feels like time has just stopped."
She stopped talking then. The silence was thick and I said a few things in an effort to comfort her, but they fell on deaf ears. This was my first contact with someone who had a loved one die in the conflict over seas. Her brother didn't pass away while he was in Iraq, but the wounds he suffered there were deep and lasting. The full extent of the damage wasn't clear to anyone until it was too late.
There is only so much carnage a man can see before it is too much. Life is sacred, all life, whether it be American, Iraqi, Afghan or Japanese. War is something that will only persist as long as people sign up to fight in it. If you know anyone who has fought over seas, or is currently fighting. Talk to them about it. Don't let them go through it day after day alone. If you know someone who wants to go into the military, try to talk them out of it. Life is worth so much more.
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