The long rows of white headstones stretch out straight and true in every direction.
My sister and I, along with our spouses, are here at the Marion National Cemetery to leave flowers at our father’s grave.
Yesterday, we did the same at a church graveyard in southern Indiana that has been the final resting place for our mother’s people for two centuries. Now, it is home to the headstones and remains of our mother and our younger brother.
Mom and Dad died on the same day one year ago. They had been divorced for almost a half-century, but two things kept them tied long after their marriage ended.
One was that they had children together. I was the first born, followed by my sister almost two-and-a-half years later. I was almost 8 years old when our brother came along.
Mom and Dad were devoted parents. They cared about their children, worried about us, pushed us and, in ways they couldn’t always express, loved us.
The other great tie came near the end of their lives.
It was grief.
When my brother was diagnosed with the cancer that would kill him, his illness pounded Mom and Dad.
Even though she was almost an invalid by that point, Mom insisted that, if she could just get close to our brother, she would summon the strength to nurse him back to health. When we convinced her that was not possible, she began to pray incessantly, offering to trade her life for her son’s.
I went with my brother to his doctors’ visits. Mom always wanted a full report.
At the call’s end, she would ask me, “Do you think maybe there’s a chance he could get better?”
I told her the truth — that the best we could hope for was stretching out the clock. She would hear me. She’d accept it for a time, but she found the prospect of her youngest child’s death too painful to acknowledge for long.
I knew that we’d have the same conversation the next time I called.
Dad’s denial was different. He and my brother lived together during the last years of my brother’s life. They both had health challenges and kept an eye on each other.
My father had spent formative years of his childhood in an orphanage, an experience that taught him to deal with pain by pretending it didn’t exist. He spent his life shrugging off the deepest hurts, assuring everyone always that he was all right.
Whenever my brother’s cancer came up, Dad would say, “I think he’s turning the corner.”
Then, he’d change the subject.
When my brother did die on a frigid January morning in 2022, both my parents fell into a despair from which they never recovered. Mom raged from her wheelchair against the cruel fates that had taken her youngest child. Dad, blind and hearing-impaired, struggled to pretend he was tough enough to absorb this blow, too.
It was in quiet moments their grief most revealed itself.
Sometimes during one of my visits, Mom would go silent. Then she would look at me and say she wished my brother were still here before crying.
For most of his life, my father wouldn’t talk about the past. After my brother died, though, Dad grew more reflective.
He expressed regret that he and Mom had not been able to work through their differences. Often, he would ask me if I thought my brother could have done anything different that would have made a difference. Behind that question was one Dad didn’t ask — what could he have done that might have changed things?
Death was something both my parents welcomed, a release from a pain that cut right down to their souls. My sister and I felt sadness when they died, but also relief that their suffering was over.
Their deaths, though, left us feeling isolated, the last surviving members of our birth family, the only two people left on earth who know what it was like to grow up in our house.
The oldest links in our family chain.
There is no quiet so still as that of a graveyard. It’s like eternity whispering.
As we walk among the headstones, my sister and I think of hearts broken and loved ones lost.
And we pray that they rest in peace.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students, where this commentary originally appeared. The opinions expressed by the author do not reflect the views of Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
