The Day My Brother Should Have Died

TW: Substance abuse, mental health, and language.

Kyle and I were fraternal twins, and for a long time, we believed nothing could come between us. He might still think that, but I know better.  

We were inseparable in the early days. Whether it was learning cursive in elementary school or fighting Terrance Cormack in the high-school locker room, we did it together. Until college.

My brother wanted to get an MFA and be a writer, but I was sick of school, and I didn’t want to leave Ma on her own. So, I moved a few houses down and worked in construction. We justified separating, saying that our roads were just diverging for a brief period and would merge again. I still think about that conversation. Our paths never join again. In fact, his road was rough and short. No, not exactly short. He was still alive, after all. Mostly.

I can only remember fragments from the day of the incident, like a shattered stained-glass window. Some of the larger pieces still hold beauty, but even those have razor edges. The rest are splinters in my mind. Sharp. Painful. 

It had been a year since Kyle had visited, and Ma had taken out all the stops for Thanksgiving dinner. She made a sweet potato casserole topped with roasted pecans and brown sugar, green bean casserole sprinkled with fried onion strings, roasted turkey—tender with a hint of butter and lemon—and, of course, homemade cherry pie for dessert. Everything needed to be perfect for Kyle. I think she was trying to bribe him into visiting more. It didn’t work, but it was undoubtedly the best meal he had since. Hospitals aren’t particularly known for good food.

I recall being irritable and anxious to see him, then Ma’s door swung open, and Kyle strode in with his infectious smile. Joy pushed everything else aside. “Hey, little bro,” he said. Kyle was born fifty seconds before me. 

“Ky the Guy,” I said back, hugging him. It was good seeing him, and the longer we were back together, the better everything felt, as if a fading coal in me had been sprayed with kerosene. We fell into old habits and speeches and stupid games. It was like time never passed between us. I tossed a plate through the air, he caught it and set it on the table, and Ma yelled at us to stop throwing plates. We were a family. 

Thanksgiving dinner was filled with laughter and shared stories. We ate pie, poured a round of drinks, and played board games. Eventually, the sun faded, and Ma went to bed. The two of us filled a cooler with beer, sank into the couch, and listened to our favorite bands. After three more beers, he told me about his ex-girlfriend. After five, I told him about a girl I was interested in at work. Seven beers deep, I told him how angry I had been at him. That it felt like he’d abandoned Ma and me. We used to be inseparable, and now I only saw him once a year. To my surprise, he didn’t argue the point.

“You’re right, bro,” he said, absently swishing his beer around in the can. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Why didn’t you visit earlier?”

He was tapping his foot on the carpet. “I don’t know, I just…” he shook his head, leaving the words unfinished. 

“You just, what?” I pressed.

“I don’t know, man.” He leaned back into the couch and picked at the beer tab. “It’s going to sound dumb.” I didn’t respond, and he continued. “It feels like I’m growing a lot. Everything is new and fresh and has something to teach me. I like it. But here?” He shrugged. “It feels good, but the same. Like I know what to expect.”

I tossed an empty can into the cooler. “So, we’re old news out here, huh?”

Kyle handed me a fresh beer. I cracked it, and a stream hissed over my fingers. I sucked the beer off. “You’re losing something you can’t get back, Ky.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and slid it onto the table. “For Christ’s sake, you texted us when you were five minutes away.” 

He looked up from his can. “So?”

“So, that’s the kind of shit a stranger does! You don’t call. You don’t visit. You don’t even feel comfortable walking into Ma’s house. You’re closer to being a stranger than family.” It wasn’t true, of course, and I regretted those words the moment they left, but like a released arrow, it was impossible to stop, and I saw it punch through his chest. 

He stood. “All right, you want to do this? How many times have you visited me?” He wrapped his fingers into a zero. “I bet you never even thought about it. No, it’s all my fucking fault. I have to drop everything and visit, or I’m not part of the family.” 

“Yeah! Because Ma and I didn’t move away,” I said, getting to my feet. “You did. Aunt Ruby died, Pop died, and now you fucking left her. If it wasn’t for me she’d be all alone just waiting—”

“Don’t bring Pop into this,” Kyle snapped, his eyes were glassy, and we stood for a moment in silence. “You think Ma would want me dragging my knuckles around her house like you? I’m doing something with my life. You’re just wasting yours trying to feel useful.” His words were becoming increasingly slurred. He looked like he was going to say something more, but he sighed and patted his pockets to check for something. “I’m done talking about this,” he muttered, turning toward the door.  

“Where are you going?”

“Out to get smokes. I’ll be back in half an hour, max.”

I was stunned. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, look, don’t start—”

“Pop died of lung cancer, and you still started smoking? I thought you were getting smart in college. What the hell happened to you?”

Kyle waved the words away like he was shooing a fly. “Leave it alone, bro.” 

I grabbed his arm and spun him around to face me. His eyes went wild around the edges, and for a moment, I thought we were going to brawl.  “We’re eight beers deep, Kyle. Don’t be a moron.” 

He jerked his arm away. “A moron?” His face grew bitter. “This is what I mean. I did change, and you know what? You didn’t. Not at all.”

I can still see that moment perfectly. Sometimes in my dreams, or when I’ve been drinking, even when I’m doing nothing at all. It’s branded into my mind. The way the coat rack teetered when he jerked his windbreaker off. The sound of his heel scraping the mat outside. The heavy thud of the door closing behind him and, a moment later, the guttural rev of his car starting. He left, and I fell asleep on the couch, waiting for him to return, but he never did.

Ma woke me up in a panic several hours later, telling me Kyle had been in an accident, and soon after, we rushed into an ICU room. 

Kyle, my twin brother, was barely alive. It is impossible to describe exactly what I experienced in that room. Tubes and wires barely held death at bay. Mechanical puffing and hissing in place of his breaths. A terrible beeping on a monitor, a window into his fight for existence. The skin that wasn’t bandaged was purple and swollen. There is something that lingers beyond being simply disturbed. It was a perverse wrongness. It was shocking and monstrous, and overwhelming. Even now, decades later, it puts a tremor in my hands. The surgeons told us that his chances of survival were minimal. Then, we were told the details of the crash. Kyle had been speeding. He ran a light. He killed a mother, father, and their three-year-old daughter. Kyle should have died that day. But he didn’t.

Ma visited him frequently, and after a few months, she stopped asking if I wanted to go with her.

Kyle’s health improved over the next year, but not completely. He never regained the use of his legs and had limited movement in his arms, but more than that, something was wrong with his brain. The doctors called it anterograde amnesia. Kyle couldn’t form any new memories. He was often confused, and every morning, he thought the previous day was Thanksgiving.

 I thought it was a natural defense against the trauma of killing a family. Part of him just couldn’t accept it. The years went on, and Ma visited him weekly. She would tell me that he is still writing every day, and it’s never the same thing. One day she told me that Kyle had volunteered to be studied and would be moved to another medical research facility. She asked if I wanted to visit him in the new hospital. I didn’t. Kyle may not have remembered what he did, but I sure as shit did.

Eventually, I moved across town to ease my commute. Still, I visited often, and every Thanksgiving, I ate turkey and pie with Ma, and in the evenings, she would bring the leftovers to Kyle, and I would drive home.

Every time I visited, Ma looked a little older. Her body slowed, and she sometimes needed help getting up and down the stairs, so I moved her bedroom to the first floor. Then, her mind began slowing, sliding in and out of the past. Time moves faster as we age, and it blazes when you can sense the end of something. Far too soon, I was sitting on her hospice bed, clutching her to my chest and weeping while I whispered my goodbyes. 

Ma was eighty when she passed. I was fifty-eight. Still, I didn’t visit Kyle. There were times when I wanted to, but after so much time had passed, I couldn’t bring myself to go. Not for another ten years. No catalyst or epiphany made me finally visit him. I just felt ready. 

I stood outside his room for several breaths. The nurses would have already told him about the accident and that I was visiting. I didn’t know what to expect, so I just walked in. 

Kyle was lying on a cushioned bed with a duvet pulled to his hips. He looked surprisingly good. His salt and pepper hair was cut short, but there was still plenty of it. His eyebrows were fuzzy and kindly, and a well-maintained beard covered most of his mouth and neck. He reminded me of a professor or an ancient Greek philosopher. He even had a pair of thin glasses perched on his nose. He peered over them, and when he saw me, his whole being smiled. His eyes squinted and watered, his great beard widened, and the lines around his eyes deepened. My heart ached in my chest. My brother. Kyle. 

“Hey, little bro,” he said in a raspy voice.

“Ky the Guy,” I said back. He laughed, and I wiped the tears stinging my eyes. I sat in a chair next to the bed.

“How are you?” Kyle asked. He pressed a switch that made the upper half of the bed buzz and lift into a seated position.

“I’m good,” I said simply. The sheer number of things running through my mind was paralyzing. There was also the problem that anything I said didn’t really matter. He would forget the moment he fell asleep. It was a terribly lonely thought.

“Bro,” he said, looking at me with the same sharp blue eyes. “How are you?” he asked again in a gentle, earnest voice.

Something in me cracked. I couldn’t hold back the flood of tears, and as I sat beside him, sobbing, he laid a hand on my leg and squeezed it. “I miss Ma,” I said when I regained my composure. “And I miss you. I’m sorry, Kyle.”

A soft smile touched his lips. “You have nothing to apologize for, bro. I drank the beer. I drove the car. I’m the one who’s sorry. I can’t imagine what you two went through. Is she…”

He let the question hang in the air. I nodded, and his lips whitened. “How long ago?”

“Ten years.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Then, we spoke of small things for a while, simply enjoying the company. Eventually, however, I broached the crash. “So, you don’t remember anything since the crash. Not even yesterday?”

“No,” he said, then cocked his head at me. “Have you never asked me that before?”

I shrugged. “Have you written today yet?” I asked more to change the subject.

“No, but I will.” He raised a slightly shaking finger at a filing cabinet against the wall. “The nurses told me it’s nearly full.” He gave me a flat look. “No,” he said. “I don’t just write the same shit repeatedly, thank God. Hope the researchers got something useful out of me at least.”

“So, it’s never the same?”

“No, unless they’re lying to me.” He adjusted his bed slightly again. “They also said that my writing has been improving. I’m not sure I buy that one.” 

“How is that possible? You can’t learn new words, right?”

“No, but I gain muscle memory still.” He pointed to the controls of the bed. “I instantly knew how to operate this bed, for instance.”  

I looked at the bed for a moment, then back at him. “Ky, it has one lever.” I was surprised when he started laughing. They were full-body laughs, hard enough to pull a tear from his eyes. He shifted, revealing a control panel on the opposite side of the bed, and I laughed. 

We spoke for hours, but it always circled back to the same subject, Ma. 

“It’s been so long,” I said. “Over ten years, and I knew it was coming. But I miss her so much.” I bit the rest of my words, ashamed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s worse for you. Every day you have to learn that she passed away all over again. Shit.” 

“It’s not a competition, bro.” He closed his eyes long enough for me to worry he might have fallen asleep. “Have I ever asked you to visit me again?” he asked.

“No.” 

“Can you visit me tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I’m getting tired.” I was shocked at how suddenly his energy left. “I want to write something, and I want you to read it tomorrow.” He looked up at me with those deep blue eyes. “Is that okay?” 

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ky.”

That night, I had trouble sleeping. I was filled with a range of emotions too complicated to parse. 

The next day, as early as I was allowed, I went to see Kyle again. 

He gave me the same joyous smile. 

There was a piece of printed paper on the desk next to him, which he handed to me when I sat. “I read it this morning,” he said. “I have to say. It’s pretty damn good.” 

I put on my reading glasses and held the paper to the light. I fell into the words entirely. It was filled with raw emotion and unfiltered love, and it ended with a heart-wrenching description of Ma. It wasn’t just a physical description. It captured the subtle twang of her words, the small habits that used to be irritating, the way she would place her hand on the side of our face, and the warmth it carried. 

When I finished, the paper was blotted with tears. I was filled with shame for not visiting him. I didn’t deserve such a gift.

“Thank you, Ky. I don’t know what to say.”

He waved as if shooing away a fly. 

“Ky,” I said, wrapping my hand around his thin arm. “I visited for the first time yesterday. I was scared. And I was so angry. Angry at you. At me. I don’t know. I’m so sorry.” 

 Kyle placed his soft hand on mine. “It’s okay, little bro.” He smiled. “I saw you yesterday at Thanksgiving.” He held my gaze for a moment before speaking again. “Will you visit me more often?”

“I will.”

END