Leaving My Brother's House

It is amazing how closely life and death can coexist. For every person that dies, there are roughly 2 other people being born. So, yes, side by side dwell, yet one consistently outrunning the other. Until, however, they collide…

One such collision took place for me on a brightly colored spring day over 20 years ago. I was a senior in high school and excited about my many new found freedoms, including the license to drive; I mean really drive. I had been earned my driver’s license the year prior, but my movement had been restricted to school, work and church, with an occasional run to the grocery store. But with the onset of my senior year, I was released to venture beyond the safety of my circuitous route.

I had this new privilege in hand, well the car keys really but you get the picture, when I got the call to come to a downtown hospital. A family member had just had a baby. Honestly, I do not remember if I was more excited about driving downtown or meeting the new edition to the family. It was probably the former, as teenagers are generally self-centered.

I grabbed one of my sisters; I do not remember which, and headed downtown. Not only would I be driving in heavy traffic, I would also have to navigate a fairly large parking garage. Confident that I could handle it all, I turned up the music and hit the streets. With no adult in the car offering unsolicited driving advice, I was truly in the driver’s seat.

Ironically, navigating the parking garage turned out to be easier than finding our way around the hospital. With one elevator leading to this side and the other to another side, we got quite turned around. Finally, we arrived at the maternity floor with all of its bright colors and happy sounds. Thinking back, I can only characterize it as the look and sound of new life. The atmosphere was charged with happiness and decorated with pink and blue ribbons. The nurses seemed less stressed as they chattered at their stations and stuck their heads into rooms checking on new parents and babies. It even seemed to smell differently than the other floors, as I had encountered while wandering from floor to floor searching for my destination.  We all realize that death has an odor, and it is an odor that hangs in the atmosphere. So, I can only contrast the scents on the maternity floor with that, and identify the sweet smell tickling my nose as the smell of life.

Tapping on the door, I heard a summons to enter. The voice was familiar so I know I was in the right place – finally. All smiles, I burst into the spacious quarters ready to wash my hands and hold the new baby. The ionic Johnson and Johnson’s scent was what I expected to greet my nostrils. That is what all babies smell like, right?  Instead, a painfully familiar odor gripped me, stalling my steps. I smelled death. And not just any death, it was a death that I had died a thousand times. I have heard people describe the face of death, but for me it was always a smell – deodorant mixed with man sweat. And that day, in that hospital room, death’s odor swallowed the scent of new life.

Turning my head to follow the smell, I saw him. He looked the same, and he obviously smelled the same. He smelled like, well, him. It was a smell that I had not had to inhale for over five years, but it was obviously a smell that my brain had catalogued and distinctly labeled. The memories attached to that smell slammed against my skull, making me want to brace my head in my hands and run from the room screeching. Instead, I regrouped quickly, as I had been subconsciously trained to do, and turned my attention to the smiling faces and cooing sounds that were reaching out to snatch me back into the present – my now.

That day, in that room, I chose life over death. This is hindsight talking, because in that moment all those years ago, I felt like death would once again lay on top of me making it impossible to breathe anything but its scent and to feel little else other than its creepy embrace.

Instead, however, of leaning into my completely justifiable fear and anxiety, I moved first to the sink to wash my hands, and then to the bassinet. I held life in my hands. I held it close. I breathed deeply, filling my nostrils until the odor of death dissipated. And when I opened my eyes after one of those deep breaths, I noticed that death had slipped out of the room… That day new life won.