He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother

by Wilkinson Riling

There is a quote from French dramatist Jean Baptiste Legouve, "A brother is a friend given by nature." I can say from experience, nature went out of her way to provide to me the best friend, the best brother, a person can have. It would be years later when cruel fate would override that process of natural selection with the indifference of a random accident.

We were two years apart, my brother Richard and I, but I can tell you we had a deep connection I've heard only exists among twins. Physically, for all the similarities, there were significant differences. Richard was taller, I was leaner. Richard was muscular, where I was slight. Richard was left handed, I was right. Richard was outgoing and personable, I leaned towards being introverted. The one trait we both possessed was we could look at each other and know in that instant what the other was thinking. With just a glance we could detect in one another our thoughts, mood, veracity, anxiety, needs and most of all humor. That was the one super power he had over me. He could make me laugh anytime he wanted, and often did.

When we were kids we had a basement my Dad had refurbished with a tile floor, drop ceiling and wood paneling. Pop even put a TV in the back wall when the first remote controls came out. The basement was a man cave long before they were ever known as man caves. Speaking of caves, when you closed the main door and covered up the basement window, it was black as pitch in the cellar.

The neighborhood kids would come over to play a game of "Tag in the Dark." The person who was "It" would step out of the room and count while everyone scurried for hiding places. That person, after reaching "ten Mississippi," would turn off the light, enter and have to search in the darkness to find the next person to be "It."

My brother never bothered searching for anyone else, he just would start calling out my name in a funny voice and wait to hear my stifling giggles. I tried so hard not to laugh one time, I wet my pants. So, when he tagged me and the lights came up, I was not only "It," I was pissed, because he made me the focal point of much childhood derision. But I knew then as I know now, all's far in a game of "Tag in the Dark."

My brother had a softer side to him as well. When we were kids we shared a room and a bed. Around Christmas time we both liked having a back scratch. When we gave each other a back scratch there was always an argument who went first. Because if you were the first scratcher, then you, as the scratchee, could fall asleep after. Without a clock we had to figure out how to time the length of the back scratch. So, we used the Christmas standard, "Silent Night." The back scratch would last only as long as the first two stanzas of the carol. Richard always got to give me a back scratch first, leaving me half asleep to finish up. I still remember my seven-year-old voice cracking on the high notes of the lyrics encouraging one to sleep in heavenly peace and finishing with my brother asleep in what could only be described as such.

I smoked my first cigarette with my brother. I was around ten. We would go behind our garage along with my brother's friend Scotty. We took turns puffing and try not to cough on a Winston cigarette Scott stole from his mother. Our garage was backed up against a small hill that divided our block from the street behind us. This hill gave us easy access to the garage roof where we would practice our delinquency. On this particular day, we were racing to climb up to the garage roof. Scott and I took the well travelled back route.

My brother had a better idea. My father had left a ladder out, unbeknownst to us, Richard set it up in front of the garage and started to climb. Scott and I arrived on back of the roof just as Richard's arms came over the opposite end of the garage followed by his grinning face. He had that smile on his face thinking he surprised us with his ingenuity. It took less than a second for that smile to be replaced by a look of fear and regret. The ladder slipped out from under him and he disappeared from view. I don't remember hearing him scream, I do remember the sound of crashing glass.

Scott and I ran up to the edge of the roof and looked down. The image is burned into my brain like a color daguerreotype. The edges may be faded, but all the consequential parts clear and visible. Richard lay splayed on his stomach perpendicular to the fallen ladder and surrounded by shards of glass from a broken window. He was wearing short pants. His left leg was cut open at the calf with a four inch wide vertical tear that ran from just below the knee to just above the ankle. There was a pool of blood around the area of his leg. I could see the white of his bone protruding out from the canal of blood held in his place by a levee of skin.

I don't ever recall being more clear of thought. I remembered our neighbor had been working in his garage. I jumped off the back of the garage and ran through the neighbor's hedges, I told my neighbor that Richard needed help. The neighbor ran over with rags to use as a tourniquet. I didn't follow. Instead, I ran down the driveway and up the street. This happened on a Saturday afternoon. I recalled that another neighbor up the street always had her father over for a late afternoon spaghetti dinner on Saturday. Moreover, I remembered her father was a doctor. I got the old man away from his Italian dinner and to bring his medical bag. I pushed him down the street imploring him to hurry and to save my brother.

The doctor had clean bandages and gave my brother a shot of something just as the emergency vehicle showed up. In the end, Richard required over seventy stitches and had to work to rebuild muscle in his leg. It only served to make me aware of how accident prone my brother could be. I've heard it suggested because he's left handed as the reason, but I believe it's because he was fearless. He remained so even after taking that fall.

My brother went on to become of all things, a roofer. Talk about tempting the fates. He started his own roofing company which became locally very successful and well respected. I pursued a career that took me to the West coast. Whenever I'd come back to visit over the years we'd rib each other about our childhood exploits, whether wetting pants or falling off ladders, to any weight gain that we managed to accumulate over the years. Even though we both put on the pounds, Richard would always smile and say, "Bill, you ain't heavy, you're my brother." The line was taken directly from the 1969 hit from the Hollies, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." It would become our theme song.

In 1989 I was at work at my desk in California. The phone rang. It was my father. He told me Richard had an accident. "Please don't tell me he's gone, Dad." He wasn't, but it didn't look good. I flew home that evening. My brother had fallen after a chicken ladder snapped in half causing him to slide off a three story roof. He struck a car and then hit the pavement head first. A chicken ladder is a homemade wooden support that allows a roofer to walk perpendicular to a slanted roof. This gave out causing Richard's fall.

The first day I arrived at the hospital and saw him, Richard's head looked swollen to the size a beach ball, tubes and wires stuck in and on him like tentacles draping from an electronic squid. I got to hold his hand and let him know I was there but I have no idea if he heard me. I spent the day bedside and whispered to him stories from our childhood.

On the second day, I am left with another color daguerreotype in my brain. My father and I were visiting Richard. We were talking in low tones at the base of his bed. Without warning, Richard bolted straight up in bed, eyes wide open, staring directly at us, his left hand reaching out to us as if he wanted us to grab his hand and stop him from falling. It was and is, the scariest thing I ever saw in my life. Because I had no idea what to do. Nor did my father, because we banged into each other trying to move out of the room and call for a doctor. Richard was pulling at tubes and cables and stretching all the wires clipped to him. The doctor and nurses scrambled and settled him down, but I can never forget the fear I saw in my brother's eyes and the helplessness I felt. The doctor said Richard might have been reliving the fall in his mind. Add to that, what my father must have been going through and it was all beyond my emotional imagination.

The third day remains the most incredible for me, because it contains elements of life's mysteries causing me to question my very sanity and issues of life after death. I can play back bits and pieces in my head like a tick tok video, so let me time stamp it for you.

It was March, 13th, 1989. 7:30 a.m. an early Spring morning. The sun had risen above neighborhood rooftops. I'm sitting in Richard's hospital room with his wife. We're letting Richard know we're there. I'm speaking in low tones because I don't want to excite him and repeat the previous day. His wife is gently stroking his forehead. A nurse barrels into the room like Mary Tyler Moore on prozac and loudly proclaims, "Good morning, Richard, it's a beautiful day!" She opens the blinds to let in more sunlight. "Spring is in the air! The tulips are in bloom and your family is here and they love you very much!"

I asked the nurse how he slept through the night. She smiled saying he had such a good quiet evening, no seizures. She again reminded us it was a beautiful day and left. I turned to my brother's wife and smiled. "I think he's going to be okay. I'm going to call Dad." I went to a nearby pay phone, fished out a quarter from my pocket. My Dad picked up in one ring. "Dad, Billy. Richard slept through the night, no seizures. He even looks better. Dad, I think he's going to be okay." Those words no sooner left my lips when I heard the intercom. "Code Blue, Code Blue, Code Blue."

"Dad, get down here, now!" I had a sinking feeling I hope I never feel again.

I ran back to my brother's room, it was already crowded with an emergency staff. My brother's wife was against the opposite wall in the hallway looking in, but it was hard to see anything except the backs of the doctors and nurses working on Richard. The patient room right next to my brother's room was empty, so I stepped up to the doorway to get an angled view of them working on my brother. They were doing CPR and all the other emergency procedures we see on TV hospital dramas but this drama was real. Or was it?

There was a radio playing music in the empty room as they worked on my brother. The radio was playing a song. It was a song by the Hollies. "He Ain't Heavy He's my Brother" was playing as my brother was dying. I started to think I was in a bad dream, not quite a nightmare. This can't be happening. But it was. For four minutes and nineteen seconds I listened to that heart breaking song watching as my brother's life ebbed away. To add to the mystery of the moment, the next song that the radio played was Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now." His wife later told me that was their song. Was that Richard saying goodbye to us? Was it just an amazing coincidence? Was my brain seeking connections to help me deal with the trauma of the moment? I don't know. It haunts me to this day.

As the song says... the road is long with many a winding turn that leads us to who knows where? But if I'm strong, strong enough to carry him, he ain't heavy, he's my brother.

I carry my brother in my heart.