Listening Is an Act of Love by Dave Isay

Author:Dave Isay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

GREGG KORBON, 57, speaks to his wife, KATHRYN KORBON, 52

RECORDED IN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

Gregg Korbon: There’s a Little League baseball field in Charlottesville called Brian C. Korbon Field, and I would like to tell the story of how it got its name. The story goes back twelve years ago when our son Brian was getting ready for his ninth birthday. He started having difficulties sleeping, and he said that he did not want to celebrate his birthday. He said celebrating his birthday would bring his death, and he would never make it to double digits, meaning ten years old. We didn’t understand that, because he was healthy. He had had heart surgery when he was a little baby, but that had gone well, and the doctors told us that we really didn’t have anything to worry about.

He was a very bright little boy, and we were just beginning to have him tested to see if he was gifted. He was having trouble fitting in to regular school, and as his birthday got closer, his difficulties seemed to be getting greater. He had trouble sleeping. His mother would cuddle him at night and talk to him about his fears—he had terrific fears about going to sleep. And we had a child psychologist see him, because we couldn’t understand why he had these fears.

Well, over the next several months he got better, and he seemed to be coming out of his depression. He started to say he wanted to have a party—his belated birthday party—but he didn’t want it to be called a birthday party. He wanted it to be called a Happy Spring party. So we planned it, and he wanted to just have three friends. He had a friend named Ben, a little girlfriend named Jamie, and he had a boy named Cam that had always wanted to be friends with him, but Brian didn’t really spend much time with them. It was kind of like he was trying to finish up unfinished business.

Now during the two weeks before the party, Brian did lots of unusual things. He got Kathryn’s Mother’s Day card in advance and a present. Mother’s Day was two weeks away. And then he also got my Father’s Day present, even though that was months away. He got a trophy he picked out that said World’s Greatest Dad, and he begged Kathryn to get it, but she said, “It’s a couple months away. We don’t have to do that yet.” He wrote letters to his grandparents—all the things that he’d been planning to do and hadn’t done, and his spirits seemed to be getting much better. So it was a couple of days before his party, and Kathryn came home and Brian had a little red wagon. He was pulling a red wagon down the driveway, and he had his camping gear on there and his toys and teddy bears. Kathryn said, “Brian, what are you doing?” And Brian said, “I’m ready to go on my trip.” And

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