There are no photos of my brother Paul. No one recalls what he looked like or what type of personality he had. He wasn’t here long enough to create those kinds of memories for us. However, his short life and tragic death were indelibly seared on our mother’s heart. She tried to conceal the pain she felt from losing him, while also keeping the truth about his tragic and unnecessary death — actually, I would call it manslaughter — hidden for decades.
The story everyone had been told was that Paul inexplicably inhaled a large quantity of “birth fluids” while he was being delivered. The fluids congested his little lungs and he died less than seven hours after his arrival. This seemed like an atypical childbirth injury, but it turns out it was so much more than that.
As my parents’ youngest child, I recall visiting the local cemetery with them every Memorial Day to lay flowers on the graves of Paul and Johnny, another older brother I never met. Tragically, Johnny, who was born four years after Paul, died at age 2 due to a respiratory infection.
My only living sibling was my sister, our parents’ first born, who was 14 years older than me. She married and started her own family when I was young, leaving me to often ponder what life would be like if I’d had one or both of our brothers to grow up with. During those years, Paul’s death remained shrouded in mystery. I didn’t ask any questions about what happened and I didn’t learn any new information about him until I was in high school.
