‘My Mom found Andrew and she held him on the landing as I was walking up the stairs’
INEVER knew that Andrew had left a letter. Andrew was my kid brother, less than two years younger than me. I was born in 1979, Andrew in ’81, but he wasn’t my kid brother for long because Alistair came along in ’83 and then Matthew in ’85. My Mom, Patty had five kids under seven years of age. Kate was the last, my kid sister, born another two years later in 1987. There was just 18 months between Andrew and me, and we had always shared a bedroom, the same bed, because we didn’t live in a house with a lot of bedrooms.
It was only in the last year or so that I learned of Andrew’s letter.
It was a long time ago, 21 years, an October morning. 1997. A lifetime ago.
Andrew was 16. I was 17. His sudden, unexplained death came close to destroying the family we were. Or maybe it did destroy us, and we had to start again, building a new family. I believe it was the latter.
Andrew used my Dad’s shotgun. He shot himself in the chest, on the landing, upstairs, after making up an excuse and not going to school that morning, to St Colman’s in Fermoy. Andrew and myself were in the same classroom. I had done Transition Year, he hadn’t. Myself, Matthew and Alistair were in school that morning and we were taken out of our classes, and driven home. The priests wouldn’t tell us what had happened.
I told them I wanted to know.
They kept saying that there had been an accident on the farm. I knew that something terrible had happened, and I needed to know. I kept pressing for an answer. Before we arrived at the house, they finally told us. There were two Garda cars outside the house.
My mother found Andrew, and she was there on the landing, still holding him, when I walked up the stairs. She was absolutely distraught.
But she told me to come over to him. Andrew’s body was still warm, that I remember very clearly. And his lips were blue. So, so, blue.
There was blood everywhere, all around him, soaked into the carpet.
My Mom was on her knees, holding him, cradling Andrew’s head tightly against her. She had found him. It was in the middle of the morning, ten or eleven o’clock, and she had come in after driving us to Colman’s and Kate to national school. We had missed the bus trying to persuade Andrew to go to school that Monday morning.
My Dad heard her screams.
Why had I never been told about Andrew’s letter?
I was talking to Mom about him one day, and I casually made mention of the fact that he had left us no note, no explanation, no goodbye.
And she said… ‘That’s not true!’ I was stunned, to be honest. But, once I discovered that there was a letter I also knew that I needed to read it. My Mom gave it to me one day when I visited. She knew he would leave one, and took the house apart, mentally retracing the steps he would have taken and searching, searching… searching. She had found it a year later, balled up and thrown behind a wardrobe. I sat down and read it. I asked my mother why didn’t she ever tell me?
Mom said that she couldn’t have at that time. ‘When I saw that you all had begun to breathe again, adjust to the silence that rushed into the vacuum that Andrew had left, was I going to rip off the protective fragile cover and bring everyone back to live it all over? ‘It wasn’t time. ‘I wouldn’t. I tucked it into my wedding ring box… there would be a time but not now. It wasn’t the content or the note, Michael.’
She knew that time is the greatest healer, and I guess she also instinctively felt that there would be a day when I would be equipped to deal with whatever Andrew had written.
There remained a circular pellet shaped outline in the wood panelling on the wall on the landing.
It was the shape of the gun blast that had poured through Andrew’s body. I have no idea why that wall was not repaired. Perhaps my parents saw it as a reminder of Andrew’s last act in this life. It could have been filled in, or else sanded down, but it remained, there, like a testament.
Not that any of us could ever forget.
The blood was cleaned up, and the carpet was lifted and changed, but why did my Mom never want that wall removed from her sight. Every time I walked by it I was brought back to that same morning.
And, the strangest thing about that morning was that after I spent a little while with my Mom and Andrew, as she held him tightly, I went to the room which Andrew and I shared and I changed into my working clothes. There was milking that had to be done, and there was a lad working for us who needed my help.
There was no way around that.
I changed, and I passed by Mom and Andrew as I walked towards the stairs, and I went outside and I worked for the next couple of hours, even though there were people gathering, even though the Garda cars remained parked outside.
The panelling was eventually painted over, but the holes were never filled in. On the landing, therefore, Andrew remained with us.
Maybe his death destroyed us and we had to start all over again