In a couple of weeks it will be 34 years since I received a phone call no one wants to ever receive.
I was living in Los Angeles still trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life, struggling to make ends meet, but surrounded by good caring friends. Sitting in the room I rented in a house on the hill between LA and the Valley, my old land line phone rang. It was my younger sister.
She was crying, having a hard time speaking. I had to ask a couple of times, giving rise to knowing something terrible had happened. Finally she just blurted out that Matthew was dead. My younger brother who had just turned 18 was no longer with us. It was hard to get more details other than my mom had found him and it had been too late.
In a bit of shock myself, I told her I would get there as quickly as possible. After we hung up I started calling airlines, no online booking or apps at that time, to see what flight I could get at a reasonable price that day. Thankfully TWA was very accommodating and my roommate was able to take me to the airport right away.
The Rodney King riots had just ended. We drove to the airport through burned out buildings still smoldering and smoking. All surreal as I tried to process what had happened and all that now needed to happen.
As shocking as it was to hear the news my younger brother was gone, it felt as if he was destined to die young as he struggled through life. I say that because of several near misses as he grew from being a toddler to an adult.
When he was around two, just barely able to walk, he escaped our house to chase after my mom when she went to get drinking water at the well across the road, a busy road of both regular traffic and 18-wheelers barreling through. With his little legs, he ran towards to the road as one of those 18-wheelers was speeding by, barely, and I mean by mere inches, he missed being hit by that truck as he ran to get to my mom. We often found him in the street with traffic stopped while we retrieved him; as I said, he was a very good escape artist.
Then there was the time we were all swimming in a deep spot in the creek close to our house. He was fine until he wasn’t. Somehow he had gotten into the deeper water, fallen backwards and must have panicked as he made no move to struggle or stand up. He just kept getting deeper looking up towards the surface until I reached down and pulled him out of the water. Thankfully he had held his breath and was once again fine.
A few years laters, in the middle of winter, the fire in our coal stove had just had some fuel added to it, which then aways turned the stove bright red as it caught. Matthew happened to be standing by it trying to get warm when he started to fall backward. Had I not grabbed his arm to pull him forward he would have been severely burned all over his backside.
Being almost nine years older than he, I had moved out on my own to California when he reached his teen years. Those years were hard for Matthew, he was very angry and tended to take it out on those around him. Today I’m sure he would have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD as a child, which with meds may have had a different outcome for his life and choices.
As a teenager he was often in fights, truant from school, and oddly still liked and friends with many.
Sadly, one of his fights got him expelled from school and in court. Just before his death, he had tried to talk the school into allowing him to come back to finish and graduate, but his history worked against him. It also worked against him in life in general, which may have been why, a few days later, he did what he did.
We’ll never know the real reason as no note was left. We don’t know what made him decide life wasn’t worth it and that he couldn’t reach out to anyone. There may have been signs, but none of us saw them.
There is often talk about survivors guilt when a tragedy happens and someone walks away from it unscathed. What no one really tells you is that there is also survivors guilt when a loved one takes their own life, but in a different way.
As a living survivor from a loved ones suicide, we think about what did we miss? What could we have done better? Why didn’t we see it coming? How do we deal with the anger felt towards ourselves as well as towards the loved one for leaving us in that way?
All of these feelings were brought to the surface again while watching the movie She Dances at the Las Cruces International Film Festival. It is a movie that actually didn’t sound interesting from the description that was provided. The description is a disservice to what is actually a most amazing film.
It stars a real-life father-daughter (Steve Zahn/Audrey Zahn) as actors dealing with the death of a son, a brother. Throughout the son/brother, Jack, is the third star who is present in memory only. I don’t want to say too much as I want to say this is a must see film because it is written and acted that good. This is one of those films that will pick you up, knock you down, make you laugh, and then make you cry. You will become emotionally engaged almost from the start. The supporting actors of Ethan Hawke, Sonequa Martin-Green, and Wynn Everett, help make this a movie you will experience, love, and think about long after you leave the theater.
Spoiler alert, so read the next paragraph at your own discretion before seeing the film.
What hit me the hardest, and flooded me with the memories of my brother, was a very emotional scene between the dad and his daughter. She tells her dad that they never talk about Jack. It is as if he never existed. The dad responds by saying he just doesn’t know where to put his grief, how to handle the deep emotion of losing his son.
They said exactly what happened in our family, and I’m sure many others. What to do with the grief and how to talk about the lost loved one without feeling the deep grief over and over. Because we don’t know, we stop talking about him, Matthew, in our case.
It doesn’t mean he has been forgotten because I think about him still every single day at some point in my day. But, I don’t talk about him and rarely has his name come up over the past 34 years after the initial period of grief.
This is neither good nor bad, just is. Maybe this is natural, maybe it keeps the grief at bay, may it helps to keep the memories in storage to protect us.
I’m still not sure what to do with the grief and no answer has come about when and how to talk about a brother who shared our lives for 18 years. There may be no answer other than to continue on, which has to be okay.
As I continue to ponder and process She Dances, I will end with a cliche out of my own experience with my brother Matthew.
Be mindful that the last conversation you have with someone may indeed be the last conversation you will ever have with that person because of, well, life.
I still live not only with the grief of Matthew’s passing, but also the extreme guilt and pain of the last conversation I had with him because it was not a good one, not one I would have wanted to have been my last.
This is why I always end my conversations with my loved ones by telling them I love them, a hug if they are present, and I try very hard not to have it be one I’ll regret later.
Being a human, and as much as I hate to admit, one with emotions, I’m not always successful in doing so. I’ll keep improving in this area, especially now that I’m older as are my parents, siblings, husband, and my friends of over 40+ years. I encourage you to try as well so you never have to wake up with that memory of a last conversation.
Now go hug a loved one and let them know you love them!
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 
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