Beckoned

©2008 Daniel A. Brown

When I was 18 years old, I found out that my deceased sister, Deborah, was, in fact, very much alive. She was supposed to have died in childbirth back in 1940, ten years before my birth. But in 1968, I was looking at my birth certificate out of curiosity. The names and occupations of my parents were duly noted as was another fact that subsequently changed my life. Under the heading: “How many children alive at birth”, someone had typed, “2”.

2?

That couldn’t be. There was only Janet, who was born two years before me and if Deborah died in childbirth in 1940, what was she doing alive in 1950? When I asked my parents, “Who’s Deborah?” their response was to jump out of their skins, shocked insensible by a name that they had never thought to hear again. Recovering, they informed me that I did, in fact, have another sister, one who had been born profoundly retarded (their words) at birth and placed in the care of the State of Minnesota soon afterwards

Years later, I got a job at Monson State Hospital in Palmer, Massachusetts and worked on the wards of Simons Building which housed total care residents. Monson was founded for people suffering from epileptic seizures and it was common until the 1960’s to incarcerate those who were so afflicted. Most of them were eventually transferred to halfway houses when state institutions were shut down decades later. But the people imprisoned in Simons Building weren’t going anywhere. They were alone and forgotten, never visited and never loved.

Except for Stevie.

Stevie, like most others on the ward, was a baby in a 25-year old body. Each day, he remained in his crib, locked in a fetal position, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. But every Sunday, something unusual would occur in his orbit. Stevie’s entire family would come for a visit, dressed in their best clothing. Surrounding his crib, they would talk to him like he was one of the family and try as best as they could to interact. There was nothing fake about it. It was an oasis of love that contrasted to the desperate apathy that otherwise encompassed his reality.

I marveled at this and began to think about my sister Deborah for the first time in years. Without revealing my intentions to my parents, I wrote to the state of Minnesota and learned that she was living at Faribault State Hospital right outside Minneapolis. On my first visit, I expected it to be grim like Monson but was amazed when I entered the wide, green campus. Faribault resembled a thriving, bustling college town. Patients, parents, and care workers were everywhere in abundance.

I went into Deborah’s ward in anticipation for our meeting, the workers there being glad to meet me, the first member of her family to appear in thirty-odd years. When she appeared, we went for a walk around the campus and I bought her a cup of coffee. She held and drank from it, much to the astonishment of her care workers who told me that she had never done such a thing before. But there was no conscious recognition of me on her part. I visited her again years later when she had been transferred to a pleasant half-way house in the tidy suburb of Maple Grove.

I also decided to tell my parents who were still unaware of my visits over the years. I wrote to my mother and reassured her that Deborah was in good hands. Weeks later, I received a heartfelt letter that must have released decades of fear and guilt. She was relieved to hear Deborah was doing fine and thanked me for staying in touch with her. My father was less than enthusiastic and tried to discourage me from further contact with her. “You might wake up one day and find her on your doorstep!” he warned.

But several years later, Dad’s own health began to deteriorate. Moved to a local nursing home, he spent most of his time semi-conscious. After my last visit with him, I got a call from the facility warning me that he was failing fast. The next night, I was in an irritable mood, so out of sorts that I went to bed early and fell into a fitful half-sleep.

A vision, not a dream, appeared.

In it, Dad was on a wooden wharf, stepping onto a small boat. Seeing me, he beckoned in my direction, inviting me to accompany him on his impending voyage. Without hesitating, I waved him off, thinking out loud, “There is no way I am getting on that boat with you!” a reaction to a less-than-ideal lifetime relationship. He departed and I fell into a deeper slumber. At 3am, the phone rang and I knew instantly what it was. It was the home. Dad was gone. He was 100 years old.

Three days afterwards, I got a call from Minnesota. Deborah, too, had passed away. A week later, I got her quarterly medical report, dated a few days before her death. There was nothing seemingly wrong with her. She was in good health and was expectedly to remain so.

Apparently, Dad had beckoned to her as well and she had agreed to go, freed at last from her physical servitude and finally reunited with a father she had never known.