My big brother John and I were great pals. In fact, our whole family was close, including Mom and Dad, my sister, the brother I’m telling you about, and me. We were close in a way that you find few families today.
Breakfast was always a special time. We sat around this round oak table with a red-checked cloth on it. Mom almost always served the same thing: steaming hot oatmeal with brown sugar cooked in it (we piled a lot more on top of it, too), and milk. A big white pitcher full of milk.
We’d talk about what we were going to do that day, and maybe we’d joke some. Not that we had a lot time—we didn’t, but we had enough to talk some before Dad went off to work and us kids went to school.
John and I were two grades apart in school. That was sort of hard on me, because the teachers who had him were always comparing us when I got into their class. And the comparison wasn’t too flattering to me.
Don’t get me wrong. John wasn’t a teacher’s pet or bookworm. He was a regular guy, and the kids all liked him, including the girls. Maybe one guy who was sort of bully didn’t, but everyone else did.
Life went on like that—breakfast of oatmeal and milk, walk to school, classes, walk home, chores, supper, study around the kitchen table—and you never thought about anything else. Except vacation. Vacation was always stuck in your mind.
You know the kind of life, day after day when it’s so great you hope it never ends. Maybe you cry at night sometimes if you ever think of your Mom or Dad dying—you know they will someday. But then you go to sleep, next to John, who’s already sawing wood.
It was Christmas vacation, when I was in sixth grade and John was in eighth, that it all suddenly came to an end. Actually, it was two days after Christmas.
John and I had gone to ice skate on Big Pond. It was a real cold day, cold enough so that your scarf got ice on it from your breath. I put on my skates in a hurry and sailed out to the middle of the pond.
I thought I noticed a slight cracking sound from the ice, but it wasn’t much and I wasn’t worried. It had been pretty cold for about a week. So I showed off some for John, who was still lacing up his skates, sitting on a log, and then I headed for the opposite shore.
John stood up and went real fast right out to the middle, too. Just as he got there, I heard this sickening cracking noise, the ice broke up, and John fell through.
I got a long branch and went out as far as I could on the ice. But I couldn’t see John anywhere. He had just disappeared. I yelled for him, and I went even farther out, but he just wasn’t there.
I must have panicked, because first thing I knew I was running into the house shouting for Mom, crying my eyes out, yelling that John was in the pond. It was awful.
They found his body later that afternoon.
A few days after the funeral, we were sitting at the table, eating breakfast one morning. Nobody was saying anything, but all of us were thinking about that empty chair over against the wall.
You could tell Mom was trying to talk. Finally she just sort of blurted out, “Look, we all miss John, terribly. We loved—love him, and we’ll always miss him. Now I have suggestion to make. Do you remember how he liked oatmeal and milk?”
“Do I!” I said. “I sure do. He used to pile on the brown sugar until—”
“That’s enough. He liked his oatmeal sweet and so do you. What I want to suggest is this. Let’s think about John every time we eat breakfast. Let’s remember him whenever we eat oatmeal and drink milk. Let’s talk about him—”
“Yeah, like the time he and I went swimming in Big Pond and . . .” I know before Dad spoke that I had said something I shouldn’t have. Everyone was sort of choked up.
“Time for school,” he said. “We can continue this later.”
Well, we did. And we agreed with Mom’s suggestion. So each morning, when that big pitcher of cold milk went on the table, and our bowls of steaming oatmeal were set in front of us, we’d talk about John.
It wasn’t sad talk, but happy. Remembering. I don’t mean we never said anything that made us choke up—other people besides me did. But mainly it was happy talk. And we still talked about what we were going to do that day, and even—after awhile—joked some.
One day, some months later, Mom said, “You know, I don’t think what we’re doing is quite respectful enough for John’s memory.”
“Respectful?” I said. “Why it’s fun. Sometimes it’s almost like John is here with us. I like it.”
“So do I,” Mom said. “But I think we’re too casual about it. So I think we ought to set aside a time when we’re not rushed like we are at breakfast. Let’s say Saturday morning. And we’ll remember John in a more fitting place than the kitchen. We’ll sit in the parlor, and we’ll have a special time worthy of John’s memory.”
“Aw, Mom,” I said. “John always liked breakfast in the kitchen. Lots of oatmeal with plenty of brown sugar on it. And milk. Why make a big deal out of it?”
“That’s enough, son,” Dad said. “We’ll do as your Mother says.”
So every Saturday morning, after we had eaten our regular breakfast in the kitchen, we went into the parlor and remembered John.
Mom had gotten some little silver cups for the milk, and some tiny teaspoons for the oatmeal.
Later we only went into the parlor once a month, instead of every week, and now we only do it every three months. It doesn’t seem right to me, but I’ll soon be leaving home so it doesn’t much matter.
I still wish we had never begun that “fitting” remembrance, and had just kept on remembering John every time we ate breakfast.
Joseph Bayly, “Out of My Mind,” Eternity, May 1973, 45-46. Bayly’s column ran from October 1961 to October 1986.
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