The Memory Keeper's Daughter and My Brother

In my other blog I wrote about it and my cousin made a comment on it. Suddenly, a rush of emotions flooded my being. I remembered my brother...

Jun was mentally retarded. Being 6 years younger than he was, I never saw him as a baby. That sounds so inane but I particularly felt bad about it when a sister brought over an album and I saw his pictures as a baby, looking very normal: chubby, cute, normal. I felt bad that I missed those months, years, whatever time that was.

My father who's 91 keeps blaming my brother's yaya for his retardation. According to him, she had epilepsy and possibly dropped him during one of her convulsions, damaging his brain in the process. Looking at my brother's pictures, where he appeared very normal, I am inclined to think my father may be correct. What a pity. I'd have had an older brother.

Way back my father would rationalize that perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that my brother was the way he was because had he been "normal" to the end, he might have been a killer, a drug addict, whatever. What made my father think that? My brother was the only son in a family of 7 so my father feared he'd have been spoiled rotten by our mother. But was that likely with my father around? And who knows for sure?

Anyway, going back to the pictures, a number of them evoked memories because by then I had been born and was old enough to relate to him. But I didn't relate to him too much because being the youngest, I guess then it was more of me being the baby rather than me looking after anyone. I did reach out to him sometimes, would take his hand which he'd hold tight in his. I did this because I saw an older sister, the one closest to him, do the same. So you can imagine how relieved I was that one of the pictures in the album showed me, then a pre-teen, I think, tinkering with his hair while he sat on his wheelchair, smiling but I guess, oblivious to everyone. But he did look happy.

How I wish I were around when he was normal, if indeed he was. How I wish I had reached out to him more often, when I was growing up. How I wish I were a better sister. But it's too late now, he having passed away when I was in high school, back when I was 17 and he, 23.

My only consolation is that hours before he passed away, we had visited him in the hospital. He looked so calm and peaceful then breathing better following a tracheotomy. Not once did I think that would be the last time I'd see him alive...

(Sorry if there are errors in this post, I am not ready to reread and correct, but I did want to share how I feel...)