"Golden slumbers fill your eyes..."

Back in the summer of 1998, my father was still working full time. After he retired from the police force in New Jersey in 1980 and we moved to South Carolina, he worked as a security guard for a time, then managed a convenience store and then a bar. After managing the bar, he went back to security work at a high-rise condominium that was being built right on the beach. A few months later, when the condo was finished, he took a job working maintenance there for the next 12 years. He was still working maintenance at the condo during the summer of 1998. Every morning, he would get up at 4:00 a.m. and leave for work by 5:30 a.m. to start cleaning the pools.

He woke up on the morning of July 4th a little later than normal... about 4:30. He was going about his normal morning routine, trying his best to forget my brother's words of the night before, when he heard a familiar clicking sound. He had been meaning to fix that ceiling fan for a few months already, but something else always needed his attention. The ceiling fan in the room Scott was now staying in sometimes started to click and had to be tapped to make it stop. My father was afraid the noise was going to wake Scott up and start the verbal abuse again. This was the last thing he wanted at that time of the morning as he prepared for work, so at about 4:45 a.m., my dad quietly opened the door to the bedroom until, with only about a foot of space, the door would not open any farther. It seemed like something was blocking it from opening any farther, but it was too dark to tell what was blocking it.

He gave the door a little bit of a push and was able to see into the room. On the floor in front of the door was my brother. Falling back immediately on his police training, my father knelt down to check his vital signs. Unable to find any, he woke my mother and called Jay, the former police officer who had accompanied my dad on so many patrols, and who had driven the rental truck the previous day. My mother called a neighbor she worked with, Patty. When Jay arrived, he also checked vainly for Scott's vitals. Finding none, he and my father, along with Patty, tried to convince my mom that her son was dead. She would not hear it. She was convinced that she could see his chest rising and falling. When my father had found him, rigor mortis had already begin to set in, so he knew there was no chance of this, but did not want my mother hysterical, so he waited for her okay to call for an ambulance, police, or the coroner.

Finally, at about 5:30 a.m. my mother consented to calling the authorities. My father had checked Scott's prescription bottles the night before and found that there were almost no pills left in any of them and that he was due for refills on all of his medications. There were simply not enough pills remaining for him to have overdosed.

"We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival." - Winston Churchill

Around 6:00 a.m. on the morning of July 4th, 1998, I was awakened by Aunt Mary, who was holding a cordless telephone out to me. It was my father, she told me, and it sounded serious. When I took the phone from her, I was shocked by my father's voice telling me that my brother had died at the age of 37. Anyone who's ever experienced that moment knows all of the feelings that accompany such news. He was so young, yet since his mental illness had become apparent back in 1979, he had suffered so much. The first thing I asked my father was if Scott had committed suicide. I was relieved that the answer was no. I remember wondering if Scott had attacked my parents and my father had defended himself. This was also not true, much to my relief. It was just so hard to believe that this person who had always lived outrageously and done everything with too much emphasis due to his OCD had died so quietly.

We will never know how he ended up on the floor, nor how much he suffered. The cause of death was listed as "natural causes" (cardio-pulmonary failure) Basically, his heart stopped and he stopped breathing. The coroner questioned my parents at length for the delay in calling for assistance. There was a thorough autopsy. Foul play was ruled out as a cause of death. We will never know exactly what happened that night, other than that some time just after midnight on July 4th, 1998, my brother Scott left this world.

"To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream..."
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

My first instinct when I received that phone call was to rush home to be with my parents. One of the hardest things was hearing my dad tell me not to rush home like that. He and my mother wanted time to grieve alone and they did not want me driving that long distance upset. Since part of the original plan for my vacation was to visit my aunts and uncles and grandmother in New Jersey, my parents asked me to complete that trip, at least seeing them all and carrying the news to them: serving as a representative for the family.

We all suffered through Scott's mental illness together. As I sat on the bed after the call ended, I was just numb. I wasn't sure that I felt anything. Due to the demands of my job, I had not seen my brother since Christmas. The only thought that stuck with me through that time was that Scott was in a better place. I knew that. His suffering had ended. What better ending than a banquet in his honor and his church gathering to pray for him and send him off to his new life. I felt almost immediately that Scott knew that his life was coming to a close. He took care of all of his loose ends except one. My father will forever be tortured by the memories of his son's last words to him and haunted by the vision of his body on the floor of that dark bedroom.

"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I spent that day numb and holding myself together for my wife and her relatives. We watched fireworks from the car with her sister and family, but they had just lost their impact. The significance of this holiday had forever changed for my family and me.

We left the next day and made the drive to New Jersey to be with my family. I spent the next day answering questions. I definitely didn't know all the answers myself, but I gave my extended family the closure they craved. I spent the afternoon of July 7th calling my brother's friends that still lived in New Jersey, those which I could track down anyway. My brother's friend Steve and I both tried to get in touch with Todd Hundley, the young star catcher for the New York Mets that my brother had become friends with during Hundley's time playing for the Columbia Mets (A).

We spent July 8th in my hometown in New Jersey. We visited all of the important places: the apartment where my brother and I grew up, the grocery store where he and my father had worked, the police station where my father worked. We informed everyone of my brother's death. Our final stop was at the park across the street from my childhood apartment. We walked to the baseball field where my brother played every afternoon that it wasn't raining or snowing, and some afternoons when it was: the diamond of his youth. They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but this diamond had truly been my brother's best friend through all of his childhood. I stood behind the cage and watched in my mind's eye as my brother hit towering home runs and made great plays. The ghosts in my head played my brother's childhood highlight reel. When the film ended, I stepped up to home plate, on the righthanded side. I am a southpaw, but Scott was a righthander. I looked out over that field of brilliant green as my brother had seen it so many times. Finally, I kneeled in the batter's box and scooped up a handful of beautiful orange diamond dirt into a small plastic bag. Then, I turned around and walked off the field without another backwards glance.

On the afternoon of July 9th, my wife and I drove into New York and bought some tickets for third row seats on the first base side to the Mets game. I watched my brother's favorite ball players do what they were born to do. Unfortunately, my brother's beloved Mets lost the game in 11 innings to the Montreal Expos. I brought the dirt from my brother's field to Shea Stadium that night.

I finally returned to my parents' house two days later, on July 11th. Thus ended the vacation from hell. My brother had been cremated and we took his ashes to a special place on a private tidal creek on property owned by my mother's boss. We placed his ashes where they would be carried out to sea, since he loved to swim in the ocean every day when he was in town. He was accompanied by a bit of dirt from his "Field of Dreams" and I read one of his poems and said a prayer. My parents and my wife and I were the only ones in attendance. It was the only memorial Scott ever received.

"And in the middle of the celebrations, I break down." - The Beatles, Abbey Road