Stay Safe: Chapter Five
What follows is a chapter from "Stay Safe: Life After Loss," a book that I wrote following the death of my brother, Robert James Reeves. Rob, only 14-months younger than me and 32 years old at the time of his death, was a Navy SEAL on the prestigious SEAL Team 6. On August 6, 2011, while on a mission in Afghanistan, he and too many of his teammates and other servicemen, lost their lives when their helicopter was shot down by enemy fire. It was the single largest loss of American life in the Afghan war. And because of the high profile nature of this event–being on the cusp of the Bin Laden mission and the number of those lost–my dad and I were part of many, many memorials and events, and the recipients of much outreach, and the point of contact for all those wanting to do something in Rob’s memory. This book chronicles the first month after his death. I am releasing a chapter a day starting August 5th as we mark the fourth anniversary of life without him.
The Kitchen Table
Our kitchen table once again became the command center for our lives with the news of Rob’s death. Growing up, that kitchen table was our central life point, where all things started, transpired and ended. It was fitting that it get this kind of attention again.The kitchen table was Mom’s doing. Our mom’s smile could brighten any room. She had one of those personalities that drew people towards her and made them want to be a part of her life. And, she wanted to be a part of all of their lives too. Shery was a natural-born people-person. This served her well in her business, and later in her life after the wreck that left her almost homebound. When she passed away, she was surrounded by a roomful of friends and family that had been keeping vigil constantly over the previous weeks and even months. She could not have been more loved.And she lived her daily life this way: surrounded by roomful of people who loved her, all around her kitchen table. It is a seven-foot long pine table in the middle of the modest kitchen in the house where we grew up. The table was the center piece of the kitchen and the heart of our home. We used it for piling the grocery bags, food preparation, homework, family discussions, meals, friendly conversation, remembering fond times and even as a dance floor.All who enter our house that know us come through the back door. Up the driveway, through the back picket fence gate, across the brick patio, up the small covered back porch and through the often unlocked back door. The back door opens into the kitchen. The door is a full glass paned door, scarred from dog scratches on both sides through the years of pet ownership. As a visitor walks up the back porch steps, the guests around the kitchen table are fully visible. Usually all with a drink in hand, snacking on food spread in the middle of the table, all dodging the stacks of personal paperwork, mail, magazines, newspapers and such stacked on the table. Often times, we’d pulled out photo albums or books and were sharing pages and images from these. There was always stuff on the table.When I was nine years old and Rob was eight, Mom was in a life-altering car accident. Rob and I were at our grandparents’ house, out of school for the summer and spending the afternoon swimming at their pool. Mom was out running errands when a car that was changing lanes didn’t see Mom’s car and basically pushed her off the road. As Mom’s car hit the curb where a drainage hole was placed, her front tires blew, sending the car airborne, headfirst into a tree. Upon impact, the front of the Jeep Wagoneer she was driving was crushed, sending the engine of the car up through the floorboards of the front seat. Both of mom’s legs were shattered and the brake pedal managed to tear off half of her left foot. Once in the emergency room, the doctors performed various scans of my mom’s body to determine the extent of the damage from the wreck. In one of those scans they found a malignant brain tumor that probably would not have become symptomatic for another year and at which point it would have been too late to save my mom from its grip. The wreck left mom crippled for the rest of her 18 years of life, but it also gave her those 18 years by revealing the brain tumor. We’d often said that wreck was a blessing in disguise.For the first year after the wreck, the year that included surgeries on her knees and foot, surgeries on her brain, radiation and physical therapy, there was a hospital bed set up in our living room. And there were constantly people in the house: friends, family, caretakers. As a result of the sheer number of people in and out throughout the days, there was always a party around that kitchen table. Mom made it a party. She was alive and smiling and wanted everyone to have fun. She was healing, not dying, and we celebrated that a lot.That year was difficult though, as were all that followed it. Rob and I quit most of our after school activities; it was simply too difficult to get to and from those practices, games and recitals. Dad was working tremendously hard to keep the family financially afloat and to make sure that mom’s health needs were being taken care of. Looking back on it as an adult now, I can’t imagine the amount of stress Dad felt all those years as the person that was responsible for us all. He never showed the struggles he faced. Rob and I adapted to the changes in our lives and I think lived a relatively normal childhood. Mom learned to walk again and eventually to drive again. She was slow and in pain, but she would drive carpool and go to the movies with us and hang out with all our friends around that kitchen table. I came to believe that many of our friends came to visit with my mom rather than Rob or me. And that was okay. We were a close family, we ate dinner together most nights and our parents were really involved in our lives.And that kitchen table was the center of all of it. And when my mom died five years before my brother died, people again flocked to the house and around that kitchen table.Read other chapters of this book.© 2015 Emily Reeves Dean and msadverthinker.com. All Rights Reserved.