LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 22

Death is a part of life. Tammy and Buddy were much too young when they had to learn this.

Aunt Susie's youngest child, Kay, was killed in a car accident in August of 1965. This hit all of us hard. Just the night before, we had eaten supper at Aunt Susie's and Kay wanted to go to the drive-in to see Mary Poppins. I told her I couldn't go that night because I had to work the next day, but we would definitely go tomorrow...Friday. After I left, Kay went for a ride with her sisters and their boyfriends. There was an accident and Kay was killed instantly.

My brother, Darvin, died on April 1, 1966. He had turned 12 just a couple of weeks before. Darvin had been sick since he was six years old. A playground accident...falling off a swing...had left him with a broken ...or damaged...vertabra in his neck. It took several episodes of him stopping breathing with ensuing hospital stays, before the cause was finally discovered...over a year after the first episode. The stoppage of his breathing so many times left him with brain damage and also triggered something in his brain that caused him to regress. Mom and Dad kept him home as long as they could, but a couple of years before his death, they were forced to place him in a children's home/hospital where he could be constantly monitored. I saw him last on his twelth birthday. Tammy, Buddy and I stopped in Fort Wayne at the Children's Hospital and the kids took him a bag of chocolate stars, his favorite candy.

Tammy cried when she saw his broken arm in a cast. Mom, who was there also, explained to her that he felt no pain. Except for sight, all his senses were gone. He was ...well...not like a newborn...perhaps even less that that. It was heart-breaking for all of us.

On April 1 about 7 a.m., as I was getting the kids ready for school, Mom called me and said Darvin had pneumonia and was not expected to live through the day. I hurriedly called my brother, Jimmy and made arrangements for us to leave for Indiana. I called Aunt Susie and told her what was going on, that I would call her when I got to Indiana.

I will not dwell too much on the events of that weekend. As difficult as it was on me, I had to soften the blow to my children. Tammy, especially, loved Darvin. In my mind's eye, I can still see her, a little four year old, leading Darvin around. Darvin went through a phase as he deteriorated when he was just a mean little boy. Nobody could handle him when he was thwarted from doing something he wanted to do...except Tammy. She could walk up to him...take him by the hand and he would immediately stop his tantrum and follow her anywhere.

I explained his death to them, just as I had when Kay died, like this. Sometimes God only loans us one of his angels. When that angel had served whatever purpose God had set for him on earth, he called him back home. Now Darvin was back in heaven with God and would never hurt again. He was just a normal little boy, running and playing and laughing with Kay.

A little aside here. Mom's son Darvin, Aunt Susie's daughter Day, and Avanelle's son Gary, were all born in 1954. Kay died in 1965, Darvin in 1966...and Gary Dale was killed in a freakish train accident in 1969.

The resilience of children is amazing. While I and the rest of the family grieved for months over the loss of Kay and Darvin, within days Tammy and Buddy were back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened. They were not traumatized by the deaths. We often talked about Darvin and Kay, laughing together over funny things we remembered.

A couple of years later, my brother's four month old baby was a victim of SDS. My sister-in-law was, naturally, inconsolable. Tammy tried to comfort her by telling her she shouldn't worry about little Crit now, God had just called him back home to join the other angels...and anyway, Crit had Darvin and Kay there to watch out for him.