The Catholic Standard and Times

Remembering my brother

By Diane Calvin
Special to the CS&T

We were very close growing up, my brother and I. Just 13 months apart in age, we played countless games of Monopoly, fought, raised bunnies, survived puberty’s onslaught, and annoyed each other as only siblings can. Tom and I were best friends.

Years later, when work took him to Georgia, New York, and then California, we remained close through frequent phone calls and visits. Then, without warning, one October Sunday, he was gone, succumbing to massive head injuries sustained in a bicycling accident.

Fourteen autumns have come and gone since then. I still pray for him; I still talk to him; I believe that he is in heaven, watching over our family.

And yet, I’ve felt a lingering void. Why, after being so close for 33 years, did I never feel an intimate, tangible sense of him being right beside me, even once in a while? Why did I never feel that Tom was, indeed, “looking over my shoulder?” Why did I never have that comforting and warm sensation that others speak of so often after a loved one has died?

And then, last spring, God gave me the gift I had heard of. The void was filled, for a grace-filled moment.

It was the second evening into a week-long retreat, and I had decided to take a quiet after-dinner stroll around the retreat house grounds.

Choosing from my collection of contemporary and classical Christian music, I popped a CD into the portable player. Making my way up a slight hill in search of a good vantage point from which to view the sunset, I suddenly stopped. Not only did I find myself at the edge of a well-tended cemetery, but I realized the CD I had chosen, Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, had belonged to Tom. He’d often listen to it while puttering about his home, or completing paperwork. Caught off-guard by this confluence of events, my eyes filled with tears. As I strolled under a long canopy of trees, the music alternately rose and fell with lively and unexpected peaks of intensity and delight. The symphony was a perfect reflection of my brother’s personality. Radiating life, Tom possessed a unique and unmistakable energy that was palpable, lively, exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time.

Emotion filled me as I made my way westward among the gravestones. The overhang of trees ended, and the setting sun burst through, nearly blinding me just as the music swelled, coming to another spirited crescendo. The effect was profound. It was as if Tom were saying, quite bluntly, “You may not feel my presence, or think of me all the time, but I’m with you always. And I’m with God. And I’m just fine.”

As a new wave of tears gradually subsided, the sky before me came alive with pinks, blues, and purples dancing among the clouds. But they paled in comparison to our colorful, fun-loving Tom. Again, a thought from deep within surfaced, “God’s creation in nature is spectacular, but when He created us, humans, He surpassed that beauty.”

The sun slipped beneath the distant tree tops as it dipped toward the horizon, peeking playfully and winking mischievously from among the branches. It was as if I were being gently teased with, “I’m your older brother, and I’ve always got my eye on you.”

The woodwinds, strings and brass became silent as the symphony ended. The sky’s brilliance faded to gray as I left the cemetery. In an unexpected moment of clarity, I surely felt that intimate presence longed for all those many years.