My Little Brother--January 9,1964- January 17, 1964

"When you initially forgive, it's like letting go of a hot iron. There is initial pain and the scars will show, but you can start living again."  Stephen Richards

For most of my life when people ask me about my siblings, I have answered that I have an older brother and a younger sister.  For the last several years, depending on who is asking and the circumstances, I will add to "an older brother and a younger sister" that "I had a younger brother  who was born when I was ten years old.  He died eight days later."  One reason I seldom add that information is that at that point the person I'm talking to doesn't know what to say.

The truth is I don't know what to say either.  When I was nine years old my mother announced to us that someone else would be joining our family.  This was years and years before the  word "pregnant" could be used in polite company. I remember because her "circle" from church was meeting in our kitchen when  she told me.  She had been talking about an affiliation with The Baptist Children's Home in Troy,  Alabama so for whatever reason I asked her "So you joined that club?" And everybody laughed. They weren't really laughing at me, but it felt like it.

No, she hadn't joined a club, but she was happily and blissfully "with child." Babies were my mother's passion.  Anybody's babies filled her with love and delight. Her own babies she loved even more.

This is where my memory fails me. People comment to me from time to time how much I remember about events forty of fifty years ago.  As a student of the human brain I now know that with traumatic events we can block out most or all of it.  Although I was nine and ten years old, I have very little memory of her pregnancy, my brother's birth and death and the days, weeks, and months that followed. My brother who was twelve and my sister who was four remember very little about it either.

I do remember the excitement the evening Mother went into labor.  My aunt, my mother's sister, came over to stay with us while Mother and Dad went to the Enterprise Hospital. Sometime later the phone rang. My aunt answered the phone, slammed it down, ran into the den and shouted "Something is wrong with the baby!!" She then had us all drop to our knees and pray.

We learned a few days later that James Burt was born spina bifida, born with an  open spine. There has been much advancement in medicine for these babies and the survival rate is much better.  In 1964 the malady was fatal in most cases.  Such was the case with my little brother.  All I remember about the eight days between his birth and death is that my mother tried me to go see him in the hospital. I didn't want to go so I didn't. I try not to live with regret. Sometimes that's very hard to do.

At the graveside service I was sitting with his casket directly in front of me.  The small white casket touched me in  a place that I didn't know existed and I started crying. A well-meaning relative sitting behind me put his hand on my shoulder and whispered, "Think about your mother."   I stopped crying and didn't cry again for my little brother until October of 1991 when I was thirty -eight years old. On  that Sunday morning when I started sobbing, I didn't stop for nearly twenty minutes. Grief has a way of finding us.

The way my father dealt with James Burt's death was we never talked about it.  I do not recall a single conversation we ever had about my little brother's life and death.  He didn't live long enough for it to matter. The way my mother dealt with it affected all of us in very dramatic ways. She tried to talk to me about him from time to time over the years, but I didn't want to talk about it either.

My siblings and I have pieced together our collective memories and have figured out a lot of things about the traumatic events of January of 1964 and the awful days that followed for our mother, but we remember very little.

My mother died on March 1, 2003  The line at the funeral home for people to pay their respects was very long. We stood, listened, held hands and hearts for several hours.  I lost count of the number of women who said something like, "And Mary is up there rocking her baby." Apparently, I'm not the only person she talked to about her son.

When mother had tried to talk to me and  expressed her own regret that I never saw him, she often added, "David, he looked just like you." That's a memory I wish I had. I'll never have that memory, but I can imagine.

In November of 1991, a month after that fateful Sunday morning, after an accident that could have killed me, I had a profoundly powerful dream that was much like a near-death experience.  In real time the experience lasted a couple of hours.  In that dream my deceased family members came to me one by one, hugged me and expressed their love for me.  One of those people was my little brother. He was a  boy of about ten years old,my age when he lived. . Since I was standing he walked up to me and kissed me on the leg. And he did look like me.

So there you have it. Except for some details I've pieced together about  my mother's recovery, you know nearly as much as I do about the life of my little brother, James Burt Helms.

 My father died in 1995. I let him go to his grave without ever bringing up the subject of his son, and his wife.  I have long since forgiven him. In his own way, he dealt with it all the best he knew how. As for that well-meaning relative  at his funeral.  He was, in fact, well-meaning.  I have nothing but love for him because he had nothing but love for my mother. I had nothing but love for my mother also. But at ten  years old, there was only so much I knew how to give.  And frankly, I wasn't too good after that either. I forgive him. I have nothing but love for him too.

January always finds me at an emotional crossroad.  I can go back in pain and regret or I can go forward.  "David, how many siblings do you have."  "I have an older brother and a younger sister. And I had a little brother who lived eight days." And unless he asks something else, I let it go at that. He seldom asks and that's okay too. I'm learning that living in forgiveness is a very good way to live.