Tony and Maryann blissfully slept, recovering from the exhausting intensity of the hospital. The decision was made, but it had been hard. The life support was to be turned off. The stroke had left Henry’s body so useless that, had he lived, his mind and body would have been in a vegetative state. Tony believed his brother would have agreed with him, yet he had struggled to give the required signature.
For the last decade, the brothers had been embroiled in an absurd dispute involving Tony’s son, Timmy, who signed his name as Tim Henry Hauser. He had been only 13 years old at the time and on a Connecticut school trip to Florida’s Disney World. There had been no planning to include a visit to see Henry who lived a few miles from the park. Henry had later been infuriated to discover that lapse.
The phone call. “Are you nuts? That would have been impossible on a school trip.” “You would have made it happen if you wanted to.” They debated, neither budging, East Coast aggression only adding to the impossibility of any form of truce.
Obscenities, followed by phones abruptly clicking on receivers. An ended relationship. The extended family would later be subjected to years of opposing accounts, but never with both brothers simultaneously present.
Outside his brother’s hospital room, Tony had wondered if his decision was clouded with a desire to finally end their feud. Eventually, he signed the papers, knowing that this was what he would have wanted for himself. He and his wife left to go to their nearby vacation home, having no desire to see the final breath of his older brother.
They later woke with a jolt. Their deep sleep abruptly disrupted. Their ears rang with the deafening clamor of doors, opening and slamming shut. EVERY cabinet door. Relentless. From the kitchen…the bathroom…the hallway. Could it be their imagination? Was this a dream after their emotional night? Was there a Florida hurricane brewing, affecting the kitchen? They knew that none of these explanations could be true, yet very cabinet door in the house seemed to join this mysterious cacophony in unison.
Their wide, frightened eyes locked as they sat up in their bed in the dim early morning light, ears pounding. Trembling hands instinctively clutched their sky-blue blanket tightly to their chins, a protective barrier to this unknown danger.
Suddenly, Tony bellowed, “HENRY…STOP!” Immediately, the house fell eerily silent. Morning birds chirped, streams of light filtered through the blinds, no sound of a wind storm outside. They barely breathed…anticipating another onslaught of deafening noise. None came.
Tony leapt from their bed and left the room, inspecting their home for intruders. None. He returned to the bedroom and looked at his wife. They knew that Henry had just passed. The two wordlessly acknowledged that the brothers’ longstanding quarrel had obviously not ended with Henry’s death.
Henry had the last say in their argument, and he had clearly won.
Author: Lucinda Hauser
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