Brothers (and Me) by Donna Britt

Author:Donna Britt [BRITT, DONNA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000
ISBN: 9780316193191
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

In 1993, I became the reluctant owner of several pre–World War II treasures: a dainty lace cocktail glove, a pastel-tinted photo of a couple in 1930s dress, a gold watch with chains as delicate as new grass—all inherited from Mom-Mommy after her April 13 death.

I’d gotten the late-night phone call from my mother… on my birthday. Mom-Mommy, eighty-eight, had suffered a stroke. Mom had the flu, so I’d be representing us both when I made the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Media to be at my grandmother’s side. A few years earlier, I’d gotten a similar call. Rushing to Media, I’d found Mom-Mommy laughing with nurses, the latest victims of her relentless charm, who tempted her with the hospital kitchen’s delicacies.

This time was different. The woman who’d always seemed invincible lay still, eyes closed, her hair flat against her head. Most alarming was a pool of moisture in the corner of Mom-Mommy’s mouth. If the most glamorous person I’d ever met could have spittle on her face, nothing in the world was solid.

The athletic teenager who’d hidden her forbidden pregnancy had become an award-winning saleswoman, society doyenne, and church pillar. Still sexy at sixty, Mom-Mommy in the next decade seamlessly morphed from hottie into adorable grandmother. The fact that she was personally protected by God was proved each time I got into her car. Driving with impunity in the wrong direction down Media’s one-way streets, Mom-Mommy was unfazed by motorists’ blaring horns. “Don’t worry, darling,” she’d cluck. “I always do this.”

Dabbing her mouth in the hospital, I asked silent, desperate questions.

Why would you, the grandmother who’d always had special gifts for me, have a stroke on my birthday? Is my gift the privilege of reading spiritual texts to you as you doze? Sitting within whispering, hand-clasping distance as you heal? Learning that even wiping up spit can feel like a blessing? Or is it seeing what I never noticed before—how despite my penchant for giving, I’ve never given myself over so completely to love?

Mom-Mommy’s stroke gave me a sliver of time between taking-for-granted and loss, a moment in which a love I’d thought pure was distilled into unimaginable clarity. I’d never realized how dangerous Darrell’s death had made love seem to me. I hadn’t stopped feeling love, but I had unknowingly constricted its expression, even with this beloved soul who’d never shown me anything but devotion. I feared telling any adults how much I loved them. What if it sparked revulsion, or caused my beloved to be snatched away?

Now, fearless and unashamed, I told Mom-Mommy, “I love you so much. Come back. Let us care for you as you’ve cared for us. I love you. Come back.” The more I pleaded, the more she reacted, stirring, shifting, tightening her grip, until a nurse marveled, “Look at how she responds to you. I really think she’s going to wake up.” I prayed she would—yet at some point, my love overwhelmed my fear, filling me with a certainty that however Mom-Mommy left this sacred space, she’d be fine.

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