- 12th Annual Young Alumni Essay Contest
- Schaal Prize: “Liminality," Katie Laurence ’21
- Honorable Mention: “Do We Part," Trini Bui ’16, MEd’18
When my brother was young, he briefly attended the local public school’s special needs program. At a parent meeting, his teacher solemnly informed my parents that, unfortunately, he was nonverbal. When they returned home, we all shared a good laugh about this. Nonverbal? My brother talked constantly, babbling to himself and singing and asking questions of us. But like his brothers and sisters, he was shy of adults and strangers. In a classroom full of students with high needs, the staff did not have the time or energy to draw him out of his shell.
At eighteen, my brother is still shy of adults and strangers, and most people that he doesn’t interact with on a regular basis. He often keeps his head down and doesn’t make eye contact. He gives quiet one-word answers to questions, if he answers at all. His speech is not easily discernible to those who haven’t spent years learning to decipher it. I find myself repeating and interpreting his words for others when we are out together.
Maybe this is why people ask me about what he understands or remembers or knows, or if he is high or low functioning. I cannot blame anyone for the questions as they seek to understand my brother better, but they make me want to laugh and, sometimes, cry. Function is a strange word to apply to anyone; it falls ludicrously short of describing anything about my brother.
Because I take my brother to our neighborhood pool every summer. And as soon as we enter the water, we both submerge and I speak nonsense words, their sound garbled under the surface. We come up from the water laughing and coughing, until my brother says, “Okay, now again!” and we do it again and again until the lifeguard blows the whistle for the break, and I wonder what people think as we bob up and down in the water for a half hour.
And when my brother meets our newborn niece for the first time and holds her cautiously in his arms, he leans in to whisper softly, “Welcome to the family.” At the wedding of her parents — my brother and sister-in-law — he danced to “His Cheeseburger” from VeggieTales because he suggested it when the couple solicited songs for the reception. It is, after all, off the album Love Songs with Mr. Lunt. What better for a wedding than this love song, one that my brother has listened to over and over again until he can sing every word? At what other wedding in the history of the world has a DJ ever been asked to play “His Cheeseburger,” or indeed any VeggieTales song?
Nearly every summer, we stay at the family cabin that has seen generations of my mom’s family pass through it, since they bought the plot of land for $500 in 1950. It is a serene house with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on a small lake and the wooded hills characteristic of the Pacific Northwest.
One year, stretched out on the floor, hands behind his head, Tom smiled and asked, “Is this place happily ever after?”
“Yes,” I said, “yes, it is.”
For several years, my brother has attended a local Catholic high school in a program called the Bernadette Scholars for students with special needs. Every Friday, the Bernadette Scholars sell coffee, hot chocolate and treats to the school community and family and friends who stop by for a visit.
My brother is not much of a salesman, preferring to sit in the back while his fellow students sell and serve hot drinks. When he sees me arrive, he first pretends it’s no big deal, just letting a sly smile creep across his face as the other students point me out. “Kathryn is here! Hey — your sister!” Then he runs in his wonderful, funny gait with his head down and elbows sticking out and leaps full tilt into my arms. Though he is eighteen, he is still just small enough that I can hold him, both of us trying to outdo the other in how tight our hug is.
One day, I know I won’t be able to lift him like this anymore.
And on my darkest and most hopeless days, I put my head in my brother’s lap, and he leans over me and strokes my hair and says with a sigh, “Life is hard.” Then, a moment later, he says, “Okay, enough crying.” I have found no other reliable way to pull myself out of the occasional doom and gloom of my existence.
In 2020, my mom replaced the one wide mirror in our shared childhood bathroom with two more decorative mirrors. On the day my mom made the change, I didn’t at first think much of it. We were deep in the unbound, timeless days of the early pandemic, when I had come home and had neither school nor employment to fill my hours.
My brother’s response was far more enthusiastic.
“Two mirrors?! Oh my goodness!” He exclaimed. He repeated these words as he headed for the stairs and began to climb, not quite balanced enough to do so without placing his hands on the steps ahead of him. I followed, caught up in his spontaneous joy.
When he reached the bathroom, his face became transfigured by a look of pure delight. “Oh, two mirrors! Thank you, Mama, thank you! Wow! Thank you, Mama!” He said, hands gesticulating in the air as if his words alone were not enough to communicate the thrill of the moment. Swept into his joy, I joined him in darting back and forth between the two mirrors, while he laughed with unbridled enthusiasm. Then he pushed himself up on his toes, as my mom pointed out that he isn’t quite tall enough for the mirrors just yet. He made his voice deeper, pretending to be older and taller like our other brothers.
At last, he turned to my mom and gave her a sudden, enveloping hug in the way that only he can. “Thank you, Mama!”
How can I slot these memories and moments into this scale of high and low function? I keep my responses to the question vague. “He’s a character,” I might say. Or “he’s so smart, but he can be a handful.” Because the truth is, there are so many difficult moments I might bring up, too, the moments everyone is afraid of when they hear a diagnosis of disability.
But still, in good times and in bad, for better or worse, function has nothing to do with my brother. Love is the only word that can wrap around him properly, the only word I can use to explain anything about him without feeling hopelessly inarticulate. Even as I read back these words, I find them inadequate.
To explain my brother and my love for him is like trying to lasso the sun — or the moon. If only love could be made visible, then the world might see me like Mary Hatch when George describes her swallowing the moon; this love for my brother is shooting out my fingers and toes and the ends of my hair, illuminating every part of my life.
If we must use the word function, let it come down to me. For what other function do I have but to love my brother and to tell about it?
Kathryn O’Callaghan’s essay was one of two honorary mentions of this magazine’s 13th annual Young Alumni Essay Contest. She lives in South Bend and works for the Medieval Institute at the University.