As this is a History of my own life as well as of my country in my time, I shall here acknowledge my brother, Euclid. He passed away on a January day when we all sat with him. I have seen patients die, I have seen them struggle to live, despite their mortal ailments, and I have seen them slip away as quietly and swiftly as a fish into a dark pool. Euclid lingered; he rallied-- two, three, four times. If he knew that he was passing from us, he did not say.
In the previous few years he had grown frailer by the month, then by the week; and since Christmas, by the day. Seeing his condition, I had not returned to the road. In the second week of January, Mother asked Father and me whether we should place Euclid's bed by the fire in the larger drawing-room-- what we call the Terrace Room-- because the long windows give out onto the terrace and thence with a view to the wood. That day, with much effort, we moved a spare bed to a place near the fire; and a day-bed into the room, also, where I lay many nights, talking to him, telling him "tales from the road," as he called them. I carried Euclid downstairs on the day we moved his bed; I have carried five-year-old children who weighted heavier.
He had, Mother now says, ailed since birth. Food never sat well with him; he picked here and there at his plate, he ate like a bird and not a beast. Thin since infancy, he never gained a continuous robustness. I recall no more than two summers, and those not in succession, when Euclid looked strong and healthy, and even then, the impression came principally from the sun's tanning of his face.
We have never known the name or cause or root of his ailment. I believe that he had a weakness since birth, that he lacked a density of blood. He was born into a household where his three family members bulge with energy-- and he was granted none.
But he had the grandest soul. He had wit, humor, quickness, and a fire in his heart that, had it warmed his body, would have taken him upright through life. I believe that he was undermined by his own puzzlement at what ailed him, and that he railed at whatever denied him the same physical force as his father, mother, or brother.
He attempted to compensate with deliberate oddity in his demeanor, and with out-of-the-ordinary intellectual inquiry. Too poorly always to join a college or university, he surrounded himself with books-- of all kinds, on all manner of subjects. To Euclid, the discovery of a new fact was as a gemstone to a lady; it thrilled him, he turned it this way and that, to let the light shine on it, and he carried it with him proudly, his beauty enhanced by showing it to the world.
I believe that he decided to die. The new place to lie, close to the heart of the house, rather than remote in his bedroom, seemed to elevate him for a time. He much enjoyed the flames in the larger fireplace; he found the influx of company exciting-- because those who called to the house now engaged with him, brought him news. Perhaps we made the move too late-- many years too late. Had we sacrificed the Terrace Room earlier, would the energy of the world, as it came to our door, have kept him alive?
But I believe that he had already taken his decision.
He told nobody. On the Sunday, I was sitting with him at two o'clock in the afternoon. The fire blazed; Mother and Father had driven to Holy-cross, where our long-retired and now ancient housekeeper, Mrs. Ryan, had fallen ill. Euclid took a little soup, no more than a spoon or two, and he had said little all day. Then he spoke.
"What do you offer for a pain in the chest and arms?"
I asked him, "Show me where."
"It's been here"-- he indicated his left shoulder and upper arm-- "since Thursday; it keeps coming back."
I said, "Let me get my bags."
Euclid shook his head. "I can't take anything. My mouth, my throat-- I have no way of doing it."
I helped him to sit up a little, but after a few minutes he said, "I want to lie flat."
Those were almost his last words. Mother and Father returned soon and did not need to be told. Their eyes, when they turned to me, were filled with darkness; it is a sight I have seen often, the sight of fear entering a person's soul when they know in their heart that a loved one is going to die.
Did we sleep, any of us, for the rest of the week? I think not. If I went to bed any night, I woke again after an hour or two-- and came downstairs to find Mother or my father, or both, sitting in the shadows thrown by the fire. Mother read to Euclid; he liked Tennyson and Coleridge, and I heard, "on either side the river lie/Long fields of barley and of rye," and I heard of painted ships on painted oceans.
We were all present when he went. He had been lying quieter and quieter, taking no food, sweating a little. At eleven o-clock in the morning, he raised a hand to his left shoulder, said, "This hurts," and then sighed. He did not move or cry out; nor did his throat rattle. None of the things of Death came to his bedside; he merely went away. Father rose from his chair by the fire and spread his hands out from his body, opening and clenching his fists, opening and clenching, and blinking his eyes. And Mother said, looking at me with eyes wide open as though in surprise, "Now what will any of us do?"
FROM
Tipperary: A Novel
by Frank Delaney
