Sweep or Swap the Broken
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King Jr. March 22, 1964, speech in St. Louis.
The cell phone was under my pillow, where I kept it just in case it rang, and she needed me. The piercing ring at 3am from under my pillow, after I had just fallen asleep in my warm, cozy bed, meant it was time. I flipped the phone open. The voice at the other end was my younger brother, and there was anguish in his voice. Holding on to resentment and anger towards a meaningful relationship makes it easy to sweep the broken pieces to the side and forget about them. However, forgiveness is a required swap for reconnection stemming from the broken.
“Mom is gone, I closed her eyes, but she coughed up blood, sister.” with the sound of tears in his eyes.
“No, wait, what!? I was just there, how?! I will be right there.” I replied with sleep and shock in my voice.
One of the last days my brother and I were together, our beloved mother, a sixty-seven-year-old woman, finally lost the battle to cancer on her birthday. When someone important in your life dies, no one ever tells you that the whole family unit may come crumbling down. Once you are old enough, you can sweep up the broken pieces of a relationship and throw them in the trash for good or swap them out with forgiveness and create a new bond. I choose to swap out the pain for forgiveness.
Thirteen years have gone by since I saw my brother on the day of her funeral. Ten years without hearing his voice or seeing any social media posts showing signs of life on the other side of the world. I grieved for the loss of my brother, who is nine months younger than me but still my best friend for so many years. Six months ago, our father passed away; I knew I was truly alone in this world.
I created a new immediate family as one does, the ‘American Dream,’ some would say; an eleven-year-old stepdaughter, a sixteen-year-old son, a husband, and a German shepherd dog. Our busy house is two stories tall, with a large lush green backyard and sun-kissed raspberry bushes lining the back wall along the fence. It is ready to be picked, but the laundry must get done first.
“The family you are born into isn’t always the one you have.” “Sometimes it’s about people who get into your heart, blood, and skin on their own.”
“Elise, can I please have some ice cream?” a bright, cheerful voice echoes behind me as I am folding warm laundry on the king-size bed.
“Did you have real people food today, Madison?” I reply with a soft-spoken voice, paired with a sharp look behind my right shoulder, holding a towel in my hand.
“No, I’ll go make a sandwich,” she replied with flat disappointment. Pouting and shrinking her shoulders made her brown hair longer as she warily made her way to the kitchen. My stepdaughter loves sweets but never eats ‘real people’ food, as I like to call it.
“Make sure you drink water, too. Thank you!” I was encouraged out of the bedroom.
“Don’t worry, I will!” she shouts back.
My phone plays music but pauses for a moment, gives out a bing sound, and a notification appears. ‘Interesting, who is messaging me from Facebook now? Another scammer? When will they ever quit?’ I think to myself. The notification shows ‘Corrina has Messaged’ me.
“I don’t know a person by the name of Corrina. Brad, do you?”
Shouting out to the living room, asking my lovely husband as I continued folding clothing
“Uhm, no, I don’t think so, do you?” he replies with an inquisitive, deep tone as he walks into our bedroom.
I drop the jeans, I was in the middle of folding, turn around with my hands on my hips and my head tilted to the left and a slight grin, and say, “Dear, why in the world would I ask you if you knew her if I already know her?”
“I don’t know your life, babe!” Brad exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders to his ears.
“Maybe you were testing me? I don’t know.”
He replied with a giggle that caused my lips to purse and slightly shake my head in disbelief. He leaned in to give me a peck on the cheek and whispered in my ear, “You know, you love me. Thank you for doing the laundry, babe. The bed looks really nice.” He continued as he pulled away from my ear.
“Uh-huh, you’re welcome, silly boy,”
I replied with a sassy tone. With a grin, I slightly shook my head and returned to the partially folded jeans.
Successfully, I finally finished folding and putting away the laundry. I plop myself, belly down to a nicely made king-size bed, plug my phone in, and unlock my phone to read this mysterious message.
‘Now, who is this Corrina lady, and how much money does she want from me?’ I think to myself.
“Yo, it’s your brother Julio” I read.
I immediately disconnected my phone from the charger, sat on my bed, and pressed the call button on the messenger app. No answer. I frantically start typing a text message back to this lady, ‘I don’t know who you are…’ my phone starts to ring. Corrina is calling!
“Hello?” My anxious voice picks up the call.
“Yo, sister, how are you?” he says; the familiar, upbeat, deep voice is reassuring.
“Julio, is that really you?”
I reply, hoping he doesn’t hang up; this isn’t a joke, right? I need to hear his voice again.
“Ya, man, it’s me! I live in Arizona now, I have a wife, and I love God now. How are you, though?!” he says proudly, energetic in his solid yet familiar voice.
I can recognize it; it’s my baby brother. Calling him my baby brother was a joke since there is only a nine-month difference in age.
“Oh My GOD! I missed you so much! I thought you were dead; I can’t believe you are calling me. How are you? I can’t believe this is really you. Who is this Corrina lady? Why did you leave me? I miss you so much!”
I shrieked in one single breath and broke into immediate tears. I am not alone anymore; he is really alive. Damn jerk!
Madison and Brad ran into the room to make sure I was okay, asking, “Are you okay? What happened? Why are you crying?”
“My brother is on the phone, Julio,” I say, forgetting that he still can hear me.
“Who is Julio?” Brad asks.
I said, “Guys, I will talk to you in a minute. Let me talk with him, I am okay. I promise.”
As I am shooing them with my hand to get out of the room.
Brad refuses to leave; he wants to hear the conversation, but what do I care? My baby brother is on the phone!
Julio continued, “Corrina is my wife, I don’t have a Facebook anymore, so I am using hers to reach out. She is amazing, sister! She is the one who has convinced me to reach out to you.”
In tears of shock, sitting up on the edge of my bed, I intently continue to listen.
“I’ve started to pray a lot, and one of the verses I keep repeating to myself is, Luke 17:3-5, ‘Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’; Corrina convinced me to call you. I reached out to Donny yesterday, and we had a long conversation already.” he recollects.
With a high-pitched voice, I reply, “Brother, that is beautiful. I am so happy to hear you are working on building a relationship with God. That was very important to Mom growing up. You know, I am on the Jesus train, too! Since last year, I have been praying, reading, and reflecting a lot!” I exclaimed. I looked at Brad, lying on the bed on my right side, scrolling on his phone and nodding in agreement.
“There are a few things I wanted to let you know, sister,” Julio says in a disappointed voice.
“Ooookay, what is it?” I ask inquisitively. I haven’t moved an inch from the edge of the bed; I don’t want to lose my cell signal or lose the call for any other reason.
“First, I wanted to tell you that I forgive you for hurting my feelings all those years ago.” He says with a long pause after.
“Wait, what?! How did I hurt you?! I’ve only loved you even when we fought each other. I wanted -” I replied.
He interrupts, saying, “It doesn’t matter, sister. Just listen.”
“Okay, fine…” with a short tone, I reply.
“Second, I need you to know I am okay. I love my wife and my kids.” Another long pause as he tries to work himself up to breaking the news.
“Uh-huh, what are you trying to get at with these long pauses, Julio?” I say impatiently.
“I have the same thing mommy had.” He finally spits it out, saying with a giant exhale of relief.
“Are you saying you have cancer like mom did? Do you know what kind of cancer? Are you sure it’s the same one? What symptoms do you have? Who did you see for this? What is the treatment like? Send me all your medical records, and we will fight this!” I say, as words vomit out as they come into my brain.
We need to make a plan; a filter in this conversation is irrelevant. My professional medical background is starting to kick in. I couldn’t help my mom thirteen years ago, but I can help my brother now!
“Evie, I didn’t call you to go into the details. I really want to call you to reconnect. You were my best friend, and I am sorry for everything. Please don’t cry.” He realized I was sniffling on the other side of the phone.
My voice was cracking, trying to keep it together, and I replied, “I never thought you’d be the person saying sorry. You were always so angry with me, with life. I forgive you; I forgave you a long time ago. I literally thought you were dead for so long. No one knew anything about you. I was scared; I lost you like we lost Mom and Pop.” I couldn’t hold in my tears anymore; I was full-blown ugly crying.
My brother is not a ghost of Christmas past. As Brad gets up from the bed and gets something to blow my nose, I barely even realize he has moved from the laying position to sitting right next to me and holding my hand to support me.
“I desperately want to see you. Let me come and visit you tomorrow! What is your address!?” I say.
“Wait, hold on. You shouldn’t come to visit me right now; it’s boiling outside. You’d hate it.” He quickly replied.
“I don’t care! I am not coming down there from Alaska because of the weather. I want to see you; I want to spend time with you. I want to get to know you. The man you are working on becoming. Do you have air conditioning?”
“Well, yeah, and a pool..” he replied.
“Okay, so what is the problem? You don’t want to see me?” I interrupted.
“It’s not that you are not listening to me. It’s hot.” He said with frustration growing in his gruff voice.
“I am listening to you and telling you I do not care!” I sneered back.
We both paused. We started to get angry with each other, and we needed to take a break.
“Okay, fine, why don’t you come in September or October? It will be cooler than, and the weather will be bearable.” He replied with a relaxed tone.
“What is it with you and the weather, man?! I don’t care about how hot, cold, sunny, rainy, or other excuses…” I am irritated, and my tone of voice is stern and louder. In our home, we call this the ‘Mom Voice.’
“They are not excuses.” he interrupted, frustrated and direct.
“Fine. You want me to wait for some unknown reason. I will wait. But I will only wait until August.” I whined back.
“It’s still scorching at that point, sister.” He begs back.
“Brother…” I reply encouragingly.
The sincerity leaks through the words of his reply, “Okay, okay, I hear you, sis.”
“Thank you. Now that I must wait 18 million years to see you again, can we at least have face time right now?” I say in a playful and amicable tone.
With a slight giggle and disbelief of my adamant need to fly to Arizona, he says, “Ha, yeah. Hang on, let me get the phone plugged in to make sure the phone doesn’t die on me.”
“That’s a good idea. I will do the same. You’ll call me back in 60 seconds, right?” I said, spirited.
“I’ll call you back in 30 seconds.” He replied jovially.
Delighted, I say, “Deal!” and hang up the phone temporarily.
My brother and I spent 4 hours on Facetime. Taking a tour of his house in Arizona, meeting his wife, talking about his cooking experience, future goals, and the hurdles he is trying to overcome. A few months later, I went to visit him in Arizona, and he was right; it was hot. It was the first time I experienced heatstroke, and I should have waited; however, on the bright side, my brother and I reconnected. Now, I get the opportunity to listen and support him the best way I know how, with love.
After conversing for a while, it was clear we both still have our inherited ability to get emotional during unexpected events; however, our need to rejoin our relationship superseded our intense emotions. It was painful to believe for so many years, my brother swept me to the side. The broken pieces left behind after our mother passed away ended up giving me a wonderful surprise thirteen years later; reconnecting and forgiving my brother gave me a sense of relief and happiness to know I am no longer alone in this world; I have my childhood best friend back.
