April Fool, An excerpt from Twice the Family by Julie Ryan McGue
When my father burst into the family room, his face flushed from the cool spring air, he tossed his overcoat across the arm of the sofa.
“Scoot over, boys,” he said as he plopped down between my brothers, and then he patted his legs and called out to Lizzie. She climbed onto his lap, her strawberry-blond pigtails splaying out against his chest. Jenny and I dropped to the braided rug and sat cross-legged at my father’s feet. Our dog Gigi scrambled over and crawled into my lap. We repeated the questions with which we’d barraged Mrs. Seitz not quite an hour ago.
Dad closed his eyes. When he opened them, his blue eyes were bloodshot, and his smile thin and forced.
“Your mother’s going to be fine. She’s tired. She’ll need to stay in the hospital for a few more days to catch up on her rest. Mrs. Seitz will be here until then.”
He gave my brothers a sharp glance as he threaded his fingers through his wavy auburn hair. “You’ll cooperate for her, won’t you, boys?”
They looked Dad in the eye, their faces solemn, and nodded.
“Good,” Dad said, and a hint of his usual dimpled smile emerged. “I promised your mother we’d call her after dinner. Wouldn’t you like that, Lizzie?”
Dad stroked my sister’s soft hair for a second, and then he forced out unwelcome news. “Kids, you have a brother, Mark Edward. The doctors were right. When he was born this afternoon, he wasn’t breathing.”
I stiffened as Dad choked up and pulled the boys tight against him on the sofa. His chin dropped and nuzzled the top of Lizzie’s head. Seated on the floor, I moved closer to Jenny, our shoulders
and arms touching. We stared at our father. None of us knew what we should say.
When my dad spoke again, his voice was thick, measured.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to pick up all of you from school. Then we’re going to the funeral parlor to make some arrangements. I’d like your help.”
The boys blinked up at our dad, while Jenny and I gaped at one another. None of us knew what this entailed. None of us had the nerve to ask.
“Sure, Dad,” Jenny and I managed to get out.
The next day, instead of walking the eight blocks home after school like we normally did, the five of us congregated around the flagpole at St. Cletus. As we piled into the family station wagon, my brothers argued about who got to ride shotgun.
“Neither of you get it. Both of you climb into the way back,” Dad shouted.
We weren’t used to Dad losing his cool. So, for the three-block car ride from St. Cletus to Hallowell & James Funeral Home, none of us spoke. In the parking lot, we trailed after him like a brood of ducklings. Inside the poorly lit waiting area, we clustered around him until Mr. James emerged from the back office to shepherd our family through the process of burying a loved one. As the funeral director explained the process, Jenny and I blinked at one another. Our personal brand of Morse code telegraphed how unwelcome and shattering we found this experience to be.
When it came to choosing a casket for Mark, the brother we’d never met or held, Dad looked first at Jenny and me. I liked the white one and said so right away. Jenny agreed. Something about the purity of that stark white casket seemed appropriate for a soul that had never committed an earthly sin.
“It’s decided then,” Dad said to Mr. James. “The white one, please.”
My father picked up Lizzie and held her, his eyes filling. “Now you kids have an angel in heaven to look out for you.”
I liked how that sounded: an angel looking out for us. Much kinder than what the doctors had said: a perfectly formed full-term male child, strangled by the cord meant to give him life.
After the casket selection, we traipsed after Dad and Mr. James up to the front desk. My dad signed some paperwork and wrote out a check, and then we piled back into the dusty station wagon. But instead of heading in the direction of home, my dad surprised us and drove two blocks down Fifty-Fifth Street to the Highland Dairy Queen.
In the parking lot, Dad dug out his wallet, handing Jenny and me a five-dollar bill.
“Let the kids order whatever they want. Order me a vanilla sundae with extra hot fudge. Nuts, too. I’ll be waiting here in the car.”
Jenny and I smirked at one another. Dad sure loved ice cream and chocolate.
The family outing to Dairy Queen is the last thing I remember about my brother Mark Edward’s death. I don’t remember trooping off to the family cemetery or witnessing the small white casket being lowered into the unforgiving, hard spring ground, but I know that happened. I also don’t recall whether my mother was present for the burial or missed it as she convalesced. If the typical two-day Catholic wake or funeral Mass occurred, that memory is blocked, too. But I do know this: Grandma Mimi arranged for one of the full-sized Ryan family cemetery plots to be used for Mark’s internment.
Her comment over dinner one night still rings in my ears. “You know, the cemetery director said there’s room enough in that plot for another small casket, should the need arise.”
My mother fiddled with the gravy boat while my siblings and I stared open-mouthed at our parents and grandmother.
Dad’s face was beet red. “God forbid, Mom.”
My grandmother’s sentiment, while seemingly insensitive, was offered in good faith. Grandma Mimi hailed from a generation that prized frugality. They found a purpose for everything. If something was broken, you didn’t toss it in the trash, you fixed it. So, as I consider Grandma’s comment now, I have no criticism of her. What I hate is that my grandmother’s statement would someday require serious consideration.
Over the last five decades, I have often visited the Ryan family burial site and stood over my brother’s grave marker, which reads Mark Edward Ryan, 4-1-1970. While no one ever said it, the thought must have crossed everyone’s minds: April 1. What a cruel April Fool’s Day joke for life and God to play on my parents and family. As I reflect upon the tragedy, I believe it may be the pivotal moment when I began questioning the tenets of my Catholic faith.
How is it that a loving and forgiving God allows bad things to happen to good people?
After burying my brother, I also wondered if my parents were done adding to our family. When I lay in bed and pondered the trauma unfolding around me, I hoped for two outcomes. First, that
the heartaches my parents had faced in building their American family would come to an end. I also wished they could look at the family they had assembled and say, “This is enough.” Because I wanted us to be enough. Each of us could have used more of our parents’ time and attention, their guidance in developing our interests, honing our identity, and discovering our sense of purpose. But because our folks’ energies were spread thin, we were often left to our own devices. Some of us— Jenny and me in particular—thrived under this regime of independence, but several of my siblings hit some big speed bumps later in life.
Over the years, I have also considered my father’s request for the five of us to accompany him to Hallowell & James. I don’t know if it was our parents’ idea to include us in the funeral arrangements, or whether it was a suggestion made by a health professional. Regardless, it provided closure, bonded us to one another in a heartbreaking way, and strengthened us as a family unit. Despite our disparate ages, each of us understood that our baby brother, Mark Edward, had been born, and that he had died. He hadn’t just disappeared. Not one year has gone by without our acknowledging his birth and date of death.
—
A few days after my mother returned from the hospital, I came upon her in the dining room. She sat alone, staring out the front window at The Park, her brown eyes weary, and her mood morose. I asked her, “What’s wrong, Mom?”
She fingered the rosary beads in her lap and said she was thinking about Mark. My heart melted. After we hugged, Mom studied the veins on her hands and shared details about my brother’s death.
These images remain with me still. She bowed her head as if offering a quick prayer for the repose of his innocent soul.
My mother looked up at me. “The doctors said the cord had wrapped around Mark’s neck several times. It cut off his breathing. Perhaps that was the popping sound I heard.”
And this is the part that has stuck with me, the wisdom that I have had to draw on so often in my own life.
Mom reached for my hand, her dark eyes wide and serious, and said, “Julie, life is a fragile gift. We’re not in charge of how long we live, or when we join our Lord in heaven.”
My mother’s faithful words rang true then. Today, they still do.
Over the course of my life, I have considered how lack of control relates to many things, including my adoption. Much like the circumstances causing my brother’s death, adoption happened to my sister and me. We had no say in the matter, just as my mother could not affect the circumstances of Mark’s life or death. Mom’s attitude of accepting what we cannot change allowed her to cope with the many losses she experienced in building her American family. It provided an example for me with respect to my adoption and a useful philosophy with which to approach life. If we accept that we lack full control over the events in our lives, frustration and anxieties loosen their bind, acceptance and forgiveness are possible, and the road to joy and gratitude becomes less fraught.
Even though he had died before we knew him, my brother Mark had left his imprint on this life after all.
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Julie Ryan McGue is an American writer, a domestic adoptee, and an identical twin. Her first memoir, “Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging,” released in May 2021, winning multiple awards. Her work has appeared in the Story Circle Network Journal, Brevity Nonfiction Blog, Imprint News, Adoption.com, Lifetime Adoption Adoptive Families Blog, Adoption & Beyond, and Severance Magazine. Her personal essays have appeared in several anthologies, including “Real Women Write: Seeing Through Her Eyes” (Story Circle Network) and “Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis” (She Writes Press). Her collection of essays, “Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship” (Muse Literary), released in November 2023. She writes a biweekly blog and monthly column (The Beacher Newspapers), in which she explores the topics of finding out who you are, where you belong, and making sense of it. Julie splits her time between Northwest Indiana and Sarasota, Florida. “Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood” is her third book. Visit her website for more info: juliemcgueauthor.com.