Free Preview -- Chapter One: Hearing the News

Dad called me at work from his car phone and said with a wavering voice that concerned me, "Chris has been in a car accident. It is serious. I'm on my way to the hospital in Alabama." My stomach dropped, and my heart began to race. I was twenty -five years old, standing in an office building in Atlanta, suddenly reaching for answers.

I asked, " What did they say?"
"They said he was talking when they brought him into the hospital. You need to go home to be with your mother." At this point, I had a look of fear on my face, and my co-worker asked if I was okay. On the phone, Dad's breaths were deep, and as he said, "Scott, please be careful, " I could tell that he was crying. This scared me even more, and a tear rolled down my cheek. We hung up, and I quickly told my concerned co- worker that my brother had been in an accident and that I needed to go home. I wanted to sob because I was so scared and shaky, but I held the bulk of tears in until I was alone in my car.

It was a forty- minute drive to my parents' house, and after about ten minutes, I tried to calm myself. I reasoned with myself. He'll be fine. He's been in car accidents before. You've been through terrible accidents before. He'll have a big scar, and he'll laugh about it and show it to people at parties. Dad said he was talking. Chris, please be OK. God, please let my brother be OK.


Forty minutes seemed like five minutes, and I was home with a dry face and a positive attitude. I planned to comfort my mom and ease her worries. When I walked into the house, she was one step in front of me. She had just walked in and was heading toward the phone to call the hospital. One of my parents' neighbors was there, and Mom seemed to be in control. She was much calmer than I thought she would be, so I assumed that the situation wasn't as bad as I thought. She must have heard something. I can't remember what we said together; it was just nervous chatter. Mom picked up the phone and dialed the hospital in Alabama and told them who she was. She said," How is Chris doing?" Pause. She strained against the phone. She dropped into a kitchen stool and began to scream into the phone, "You can't tell me that! Don't you tell me that!"

I slowly picked up the phone when Mom dropped it and said, "This is Scott Mastley, Chris' brother." The nurse spoke to me. "Scott, I am sorry for telling your mother this way. I have to be honest. I am sorry. I'm so sorry. Scott, Chris didn't make it. He came in; he was talking. He went straight into surgery, but he just didn't make it. I'm sorry, Scott."

I was completely numb. I wasn't crying. My voice was steady. I asked, " Did you hear his last words?" She stalled for a moment and said that his last words were, "I can't breathe." I got her name again, hung up the phone, and walked around the counter to my mother.

She was pleading, thinking out loud, sobbing, and looking up at me with watery eyes. I put my arms around her, and we cried. I was quiet, still in total shock. Mom was saying, " No, no, not my baby. This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This can't be true. How can it be true?" The neighbor comforted us intelligently by staying near and staying quiet. She knew that words would not make a difference. In his book When There Are No Words Charlie Walton says, "At the moment of separation, there really are no words." Time did not exist. The world washed away.

Dad was on his way to the hospital in Alabama, and we didn't want to call him and tell him that Chris was dead; we didn't want him to be alone with the crushing reality of losing his son. We debated. We had no choice; we couldn't let him drive all the way there to choke on his own hope. I called his car phone, and he answered. I said, " Dad, you need to pull over." I heard him quietly moan, " Oh no." I took a deep, shaky breath, and I said, " Dad, Chris didn't make it. They put him under for surgery, and he didn't make it through." Dad groaned painfully; he sobbed into the phone. He asked to speak to Mom. He wanted to be there for her. Mom got on the phone, and together they cried for the loss of their child.

Chris died on December 5, 1994. He was twenty-seven years old. He was a pharmaceutical salesperson and traveled frequently to Alabama to call on doctors. He was close to a hospital in Dothan, Alabama, when he ran a stop sign and was hit by a car that was crossing the intersection. The other car did not have a stop sign and had no way of knowing that Chris was coming through without stopping. There was construction around the intersection, and the view was limited. Chris's car was knocked off the road and into a telephone pole. He was hit on the driver's side and died in the hospital about thirty minutes later from internal injuries.


I just stood next to my mom, completely stunned, and tried to process this enormous, tragic event. I stood for a few seconds with a mind so full of confusion that it felt empty. I was hollow headed from the news. I knew I could stay by my mom and try to comfort her, so that's what I continued to do.

My parents and I don't know why Chris ran the stop sign. We don't know if he didn't see it or if he was tuning the radio or if he realized what he'd done too late. We did not have the chance to talk with him before he died, and information is hard to find. The police gave us a copy of the police report, but it did not tell us much. The man who hit Chris only made contact with us through a letter that his girlfriend wrote to us. I'm guessing that he was afraid we might sue him. It's sad, but I guess that is why he never called us or wrote to us himself. I don't blame him for Chris' death, and I certainly have no plans to take him to court for something he never meant to do. I do wish that he had found the courage and the compassion to write to us or to call us and tell us what happened. We all have unanswered questions.

While Mom and I were churning in our sudden tide of emotions at home, my father had turned around and was driving home alone with the news that he had lost his first born son. I'll never know how horribly alone my dad felt for the few hours that it took him to make it back to Georgia, but every time I think about that trip and how hard it must have been for him, I feel helpless. I can never take that trip away from him. He said he had to pull over a few times because his emotions were threatening his ability to drive. If I think about it, I just ache.

A few hours after we found out about Chris, three of my closest friends and my girlfriend (now my wife) called and asked if they could come out and be with me. I had spent some time in the living room with Mom, and she had people all around her, so I was desperate for some support. I didn't want to make much conversation, but I wanted to have friends near me. I needed to feel their love for me and to know that they were willing to listen if I had something to say. When they arrived, we hugged and cried. I tried to talk, but I couldn't say anything. Since they were old friends, they were also Chris' friends. They were heartbroken by his unexpected death, and maybe they needed me as I needed them. One of them took a week off from work and was with me every day. I didn't ask him to do it; he said it was never a question. I am fortunate to have such great friends.

When Dad pulled into the driveway, I was standing outside with my friends. I went inside and brought Mom outside. The three of us hugged each other for a long time and cried. We didn't know what to say, and I don't remember what was said, but I remember the three of us with our heads together and arms around each other reaffirming the strength of our new family.

As the day progressed, neighbors and friends came by to convey their sympathy and to bring us food. They filled the house with food, and I ate because it was something that I knew I could do. I ate because it was something, anything, to do. I stood in the kitchen, stunned, as sympathetic visitors patted me on the shoulder on their way to the great room, where my parents were sitting. I just stood in the kitchen and answered the door and the phone. I shook hands and directed people to where my parents were sitting. I was in emergency mode. I am usually the person who stays calm and takes control in emergencies. I felt that I was helping by letting people in, pointing them toward my parents, showing them where to put the casserole, answering the phone, and then handing it to Mom or Dad.

The next week was the longest week of my life. My parents asked how I felt about leaving Chris' casket open at the wake. Chris and I had talked about death when he was alive. We both agreed that we would not want open-casket wakes or funerals. We would want people to remember us as we were at our best. Mom and Dad and I decided to view Chris's body before our friends and family arrived at the wake. I didn't want to have to go through it, but I knew my parents needed to see Chris one more time. I was afraid that the scars from his accident would be visible, and I was worried about dealing with them face to face.

People say that viewing the body is important for a sense of closure, that we don't truly believe our tragedy until we see the lifeless form of our loved one. I knew his death was real, and I knew that seeing him would be disturbing, but I did it for my parents.

On the way to the funeral home, we were all nervous. Not one of us knew what it was going to be like to look at Chris's dead body, to know that the life was gone from this body, to know that this would be the last time we would be in the physical presence of his body. My palms were sweating, and my feet were cold.

I tried to get my parents to think as I did about the experience. I told them that we were not going to see Chris; we were going to see the body that he inhabited here-the body he used to get around town. We were going to touch for the last time the hands that he extended for those memorable first impressions. I tried to prepare myself for seeing him by telling myself that I was about to see a lifeless form, a form which was totally familiar to me, a form I had spent my life with, but a form which no longer contained my brother. It was difficult.

I cried immediately at the sight of his body. I touched his hair and his face, and I thought that I would collapse from the sheer weight of his absence, from the desperate yearning I had for his voice, his smile, and his laughter. I tried to say goodbye, but I was unwilling to accept the finality of it all. Saying goodbye to a person whom I was sure I could never live without was a scary thing to do. It's like admitting that you're moving into an entirely new world and leaving everything else behind. It is momentous.

Throughout this process I told myself over and over that Chris was still the same great guy, just spreading his joy in a different place. (The anger had not hit me yet.) I was just trying to deal with the fact that I would never walk next to him again.


It would be much later that I would come across a letter Chris had written to me. It contained one of Chris's poems. One of the lines read, "…a fate conceived to share life as brothers…" The poem was titled "The Gift." Chris was saying that it was silly for us to buy each other birthday presents every year because we were each other's greatest gifts. He wrote about the meaninglessness of material gifts and how we really had no unfulfilled material needs. The gift in the poem was my birth--Chris getting a little brother. We decided not to buy each other birthday gifts any more. Instead we would call or visit and spend time together. We were very close.

I was touched by the words of Richard Harris, the actor and poet, whose sister died. He wrote,
"…And
in her going
the waters of my heart
burst
through the fountains of my eyes
and
day in everlasting night
my mourning kite
will fly
deep in the wilderness of my sight…"