The River

The River

Water had always flowed through my soul, but the death of my brother seventeen years ago drained every last bit of it out; replacing the water with a new kind of liquid smothered in darkness and pain.

His body flew home on April 28th 1995. He was buried on May 1st, exactly one month from his disappearance. That is when the dreams started.



I could smell a combination of black willow and river birch trees as well as the damp musty smell of the soil. Leaves crunched under foot and branches snapped. My skin prickled as the sharp chill in the breeze bit at me. I stood in the middle of the woods taking nature in when I heard a faint cry. Something tugged at me to follow the sound.

It was twilight so I had to feel my way cautiously. The cries grew deeper and the desperation in them pleaded to me. I wanted to run back the way I came from but I couldn’t. I felt morally drawn to help whoever was in need. The sound of water ripping downstream caught my ear.

I stopped at a drop off to a river. In the center was a young man fighting with the onyx hands of the stream, which were tugging him under. The sapphire sky met his cries and like a magnet retracted him from the rivers grip. His tight-lock curls and deep penetrating russet eyes stole my breath away. I was frozen to the earth, willing and ready to jump in to join him. The current was too strong to survive it. I wanted to be with him, I couldn’t just stand there and watch my brother die. My body betrayed my desire and held me there, as his cries grew silent and the onyx hands won the fight.


This is always how I saw his death in my dreams; already in the river as if to remind me of the truth of the unknown circumstances of his death. The autopsy report suggested it was a “possible” suicide. There was no foul play and a glass pipe was in his only remaining pocket. My brother Brandon walked off from a campsite at one in the morning on April 1st. He never made it to the Grateful Dead concert he traveled to see. His friends told us his last words to them were “God’s calling me, man.” I think about these words often, what did he mean? Did my brother really kill himself, or did he go to the river to “cleanse himself of his sin.” He was a strong believer in God, he preached to his friends and carried around his King James Bible with him everywhere. Sometimes I even think maybe the truth is better left unknown.

In my dreams I had hoped often to find an answer to cling to even if it weren’t true, but even my unconscious mind could not find one to offer. Still to this day this dream is a mold to many other dreams that find me. Generally the image of my brother drowning no longer haunts me. Now a little boy carrying his name stares at me from the bottom of a pool.

When I was younger I would go to Shoaff Park and I would walk to the edge of the woods where it met the Saint Joseph River. I would think about my brother as flashbacks of him drowning in my dreams came to life. It always felt so real to me, but as the image faded the water would gently trickle downstream as if the world were incapable of disaster. At times I would scream and cry raging my hatred out to the river. Other times I would watch how peaceful the river was and dreamed to be able to welcome this part of me back in.

I felt like I lost two friends, my brother and the water. I had grown up loving water. My family traveled to beaches and spent weekends on houseboats. I had fished since a young age and could scale and filet a fish to perfection by age nine.

Water was the place that brought my family together and made life seem right.It seemed that no matter what it was my brother, the water, and I. It was the only thing that was constant besides each other. We would spend alternating weekends at two different lakes. One lake we would sneak into the strawberry patch and make jam for mom or swing from the weeping willows like Tarzan. The other lake we would anchor out in dad’s houseboat baiting hooks in search of dinner and swim till the sun came down on the waters edge.

I heard the story growing up about the first time my brother almost drowned. He was a curious toddler trying to catch bugs by the family pool; both of our parents thought the other was watching. He wasn’t in there long and dad pulled him out saving his life. I was there but cannot find the memory of the second time; he was thirteen and he knocked himself out while jumping off of the dock into the lake. By the grace of God a paramedic friend was there as well. He saved my brother from drowning again. Looking back on it all now it only seems right that he died by drowning, as if he was destined to die in that way. It was the third time that was the charm; no one was there to save him then.

My brother’s funeral was unreal. I was frozen in a nightmare as the preacher’s words barely touched my mind. I could not move. I could not feel anything, as if I completely stopped breathing. Then a shockwave shot through me as my weeping released from my lips, from my heart, from my soul. I could not bare the thought of losing my brother. It was real though, he was really gone, and I was really alone.

That summer after the funeral I turned fifteen and I met a girl named Becca, she was new. She didn’t know me as the girl who had lost her brother. She just knew me as me. She had baggage like I did, but we didn’t talk about it, instead we drank her mother’s wine.

One day on our way to the store to steal some new lip gloss Becca talked about a youth trip at her church her parents were making her go to. The youth leaders were going to drive a bunch of kids to West Virginia where they planned to camp and white water raft. I began to tremble at the thought of a strong current lashing its will through a river. The fear rose in my throat like sour stomach bile. My tongue felt as if it were dry and brittle, thirsting for my soul to be quenched once more. I froze like I did in my dream. I hated being the girl frozen by the riverside.


We rode in a stinky passenger van with no seats in the back. There was a sleeping bag sprawled out and a handful of us teens playing games like Truth or Dare and Never Have I Ever.

We arrived to the campsite, pitched our tents and were told to go to sleep.

The next morning we all woke up, brushed our teeth in the dingy restrooms provided for campers, then hurried off to the bus that took us to Gauley River.

We arrived to the site where we were given safety education, strapped into our life vests and put into the water in teams. We were the Monkey team.

I went through the motions; I did as I was told. I felt disconnected from myself and all of those around me. I didn’t want to freeze up. I had to do this.

The raft glided delicately through the river. I felt the emptiness of air in my lungs; I drew in a breath and repeated in my mind “breathe.”

My rafting guide started talking about the spot around the bend where we could get out of the vessel and body raft the milder rapids.


The water was a few degrees cooler than my flesh, the humid air danced on her surface lightly rippling unique designs as she flowed. My only safety was a life vest. I closed my eyes and placed my body like a board into the Gauley River.

I saw his tight-lock curls and smelled his Patchouli mixed with crisp fall leaves. His deep penetrating russet eyes looked out at me in horror as the Mississippi sucked him under, claiming his life. My body jolted as I opened my eyes; I was still floating down the Gauley. I grabbed the straps of the life vest tightening them until I could barely breathe. The current picked up enough to control my small teenage frame, lifting it like a white feather floating on top of the sleek dark water. I closed my eyes and felt the natural pull of the onward motion of the Gauley. I became the Gauley as she washed through me. I felt the last words of my older brother burn through my heart like acid: “God’s calling me, man.” I opened my eyes to the ascending whirlpool clutching me to its ritual. I tightened my arms to my chest, gripping the mesh of my vest while digging my fingernails into my ribs. I clenched my eyes shut as I felt the sapphire hands cradle me like a mother to her child. The vortex pushed me deeper and deeper into her womb. It was there that time escaped me and death no longer gripped me. My breath wasn’t there but I didn’t labor for it, I relaxed my body and let her take me even deeper and deeper into her soul. I was thrusted forward, rebirthed out to the surface of the sapphire liquid meeting the blue hues of the sky.




Each fall as the leaves turn and the scent of my brother ripples through me I am brought back to the rivers edge. Like a little girl I tremble, briefly, remembering who I was then. That seventeen year-old boy never grows any older, but I do.

Today I hold my son, a little boy named Brandon, carrying the same deep penetrating eyes as his uncle’s. The boy has a genetic mutation that disrupts the salt to water transfer inside his body. I place my ear to his chest and listen for a wheeze or a crackle in his upper and lower lobes. I check his stomach and his throat for signs of his body laboring for air. I connect him to a compressor that vibrates his chest and I place a nebulizer cup in his mouth filled with salt water for him to huff. I do these things in hopes of breaking up the thick build-up of mucus slowly drowning his lungs.

The boy named after the boy who drowned, drowns slowly everyday—not a day goes by that I do not think about this irony. As tragic and painful as it sounds on the surface, it seems to remind me that some things are just meant to be. You cannot stop it or force it, you may be able to dodge it, but in time it always comes. Like the river life flows through us like living water to our souls.