by Luke Brown
Myrtle gave her big sister a stern, condemning look and started shouting at her. “Gena, you owe me. Did you know that you owe me? Momma owes me. Did you know that? The whole family owes me. Did you know that? You all owe me. You owe me. It’s because there is a God why I’m still alive. Everybody owes me.”
“Myrtle, I know, I know. Just calm down. We love you, Myrtle. We love you.” Gena patted her on her shoulder. “Just calm down, Myrtle. Calm down.”
Myrtle rested her head on Gena’s shoulder and began to sob deeply.
Gena comforted her as she cried and told her to make sure to take a dose of her medication to relax her mind. From the day of that incident on, Gena made sure Myrtle took her medications before she left the house in the mornings. Once Myrtle took her medications, she was as good as normal.
Myrtle even continued to party as she usually did and had fun with her friends. One Friday night, Myrtle was at a big party in Brooklyn, New York, partying and having the time of her life. While she was blissfully doing the sexy Butterfly or the backbreaking Bogle to the get-up-anddance “Ting-a-ling” by DJ Shabba Ranks, she suddenly fainted and fell to the floor because of pulmonary congestion.
Paramedics came and rushed her to the hospital, where doctors recommended an immediate second open-heart surgery to replace the old mechanical heart valve with a new one. The old one had stopped functioning the way it should. Myrtle had the surgery, and she recovered well. However, after the second open-heart surgery, she was in and out of the hospital regularly, mostly for heart-related problems.
Once, when she was admitted into a very large teaching hospital in Manhattan, a team of cardiologists carefully studied her heart and her overall condition. They sadly gave her a poor prognosis. They told her that, based on her cardiomegaly—or superenlarged heart—and overall poor cardiovascular condition, she had about three weeks to live, if that long.
Myrtle, who was not a stranger to these types of terminal prognoses, openly laughed at the medical team as she informed them that such a prognosis had been given to her many times before. “At one point,” she explained to them, “a young doctor saw the size of my heart and gave me three days to live. That was thirteen years ago.”
The first such terminal prognosis had been given to her about fifteen years earlier, when she was eighteen years old. Since then, she had been receiving one such prognosis every six to twelve months.
Myrtle cheerfully encouraged the cardiologists to be strong and be of good courage and to understand that she was a living, walking medical exception. Ten years later, Myrtle was still cheering up the pessimistic cardiologists with a high five whenever she saw them in the hospital hallways or on the streets.
Another unusual thing about Myrtle was how comfortable she became when she was admitted to the hospital. Whenever she was not feeling well, she would check in with her cardiovascular clinic or the closest hospital center. Usually, once the staff took her vitals or did any medical workup, they would admit her to the hospital ward. Myrtle’s vitals were usually literally off the chart and almost always required some attention. The funniest thing about it all was that, while Myrtle’s family was in a panic and distressed that she was in the hospital and could die at any moment, Myrtle remained unbelievably calm and relaxed.
She was as calm as the intrepid ocean liner that was now peacefully parked on the Hudson River in Manhattan, posing as a museum. She was sometimes more relaxed in the hospital than she was at home. When she checked into the hospital, it was like she was checking into a five-star hotel. The first thing she did was order her television hookup. Then she made sure that her phone line was on. Immediately after that, she called all of her family and friends to inform them of where she was and how she could be reached. She then investigated the food menu for dinner and found out who would be her personal doctor in charge of her care during her stay.
Finally, she got back on the phone to make all of her personal calls as comfortable and cozy as she would be if she were at home. Myrtle visited the hospital so often, it was a home away from home.
When Mrs. Essie Brown came to the United States and got an apartment next door to Gena, Myrtle left Gena’s apartment to live with her mother.
Mrs. Essie Brown was very attentive to Myrtle in her illness, just as Gena had been. Myrtle eventually got her legal status in the United States and also got her son, Dean, to immigrate from Jamaica. Dean lived with her and his grandmother for a while, but for whatever reason, he later decided to return to Jamaica to live in Essie’s house in Glenworth.
Myrtle met an old boyfriend she used to know back in Jamaica. Roy supposedly had divorced his wife in Florida and come to start a new life in New York City. They did everything together, and Myrtle was very happy with him. Roy even moved in with Myrtle in Mrs. Essie Brown’s oversized two-bedroom apartment. They were madly in love, and they were supposed to get married soon.
They all lived together well in their Manhattan apartment until, unfortunately, Mrs. Essie Brown had her stroke. After a year and a half being paralyzed in a nursing home, Mrs. Essie Brown passed away. Because she was unable to go to Jamaica before she died, Gena and Dr. Leonard decided that they would give her two funeral services. They would have one in New York, and after that was through, they would send her to Jamaica for her final service and burial. They felt that Mrs. Essie Brown’s soul would not rest in peace if they did not send her back to Jamaica to her home in Glenworth, whether dead or alive.
Dr. Leonard was passionate about making sure people knew all the good things that his mother had done with her life. He insisted on presenting a long eulogy that dispelled any negative thoughts that people might have had about his mother. He was determined to set the record straight even between siblings who were not very fond of some of the things his mother had to do to survive.
Moreover, Dr. Leonard felt deeply saddened and guilty that he had been unable to write a book about Mrs. Essie Brown’s life before she died, as he had promised her he would do when he was ten years old. He was saddened and dejected, because he had had a whole lifetime since then to get it done, but he hadn’t.
He felt disconsolate and guilty because he knew that his mother was patiently waiting on him. She was patient because she believed wholeheartedly in him. Of all his seven siblings, he was the only one who had made it to college and beyond. He knew that he was her only hope to shine her light around the world so others could see the warmhearted woman of substance and virtue that she was.
Thus, a simple funeral turned out to be much more than a funeral to him; it was his chance to redeem himself for failing to keep his promise to his mother by writing and reading a summary of her life. He was, therefore, more than delighted to travel from Florida to New York City to present his lengthy eulogy of his mother and then to Jamaica to do the same.
Myrtle was not the same after her mother died. She was sad and depressed, and her mood was melancholy most of the time. She was taking more than twenty different medications and became very compliant in doing so. She started going to church seriously and cut down on her undesirable drinking and smoking habits. Myrtle was fighting to live again, but this time, she wanted to live honorably in the sight of God. She broke up with her boyfriend, Roy, without explaining why. She said that she could “do bad” all by herself. Everyone was very proud of her sudden maturity and sobriety.
Two years after her mother died, Myrtle called Leonard in Florida to let him know that since she had stopped taking all her meds, she felt so much better. Dr. Leonard was shocked to hear what his sister had to say about stopping all of her medications without her doctor’s knowledge. He strongly urged her to restart all of her meds, or at least all of her heart medications. He encouraged her to go and talk with her doctor about making changes to her therapy to decrease any major side effects that she might have been experiencing. By this time, he knew that Myrtle had been diagnosed as HIV positive, a present from Roy.
Myrtle had not been the same happy-go-lucky person she used to b
e before Mrs. Essie Brown passed away. The reality of the loss of her mother hit her hard. She once told Dr. Leonard that when her mother died, she felt like she had truly lost her best friend. Mrs. Essie Brown was her crutch in life. Mrs. Essie Brown stood by her words when she promised to always be there for her. One solid thing about that family, they genuinely stood by their words. When they made a promise, they zealously kept it to the end.
Mrs. Essie Brown taught her kids that if a man does not have his word, he has nothing. She was the one who encouraged Myrtle to take her medications. She was also the one who constantly showed her why life was worth living to its fullest potential.
After Mrs. Essie Brown passed away, Myrtle felt alone. She never held any grudges against her mother, because she knew that her mother truly loved and cared for her. Her mother told her that just about every day.
Myrtle truly believed those words because she knew that Mrs. Essie Brown was as honest as the tropical sunshine was to the Montego Bay white-sand beaches and as the twinkling lights were to the New York City nights. She wished that Mrs. Essie Brown was around to comfort her in her times of despair.
Sometimes Myrtle felt so sad, she believed that her whole life had been a mistake from the beginning. She believed that her mother had tried to end her relationship with her father a little too late. It was too late because Essie was already pregnant with her. It was a mistake then, and she believed that her whole life had been one big mistake ever since that day.
Myrtle died on February 13, 2003, two months after speaking to her brother. After she passed away, Dr. Leonard realized that although Myrtle had promptly restarted most of her medications the day after their phone conversation, she had not restarted her digoxin medication, which was one of the main medications for her heart.
She had been dutifully taking that cherished medication since her teenaged years. Myrtle and her digoxin heart medication were closer than twins. After all these years of devoted medication compliance, she was now in one symbiotic accord with her digoxin medication. She knew her meds so well that she could accurately estimate the effective outcome based upon the timeline of the omission of her digoxin medication.
Dr. Leonard realized that his sister was simply fed up with life. She was fed up with the inequitable hand of disparity that life had dealt her. That was why she told him over the phone on their long-distance call that she was getting married on February 13, 2003, and that she would love for him to be her “give-away” father at her wedding.
It wasn’t until the eleventh hour, so to speak, that Dr. Leonard realized that his heartbroken sister was being very honest with him during that call. She was as honest as a heartbeat was to a stethoscope and blood pressure was to a sphygmomanometer when she told him, in all sincerity, the bona fide truth that she was getting married to someone who wholeheartedly loved and accepted her for who she was. She was honest when she said that she had confessed her undisguised story to Him and He loved her even more.
It was after her death that Dr. Leonard was sucker-punched with the reality that his sister had been faced with one disaster more than she could bear. It was a brutal TKO blow that he never really recovered from.
Along with having to deal with a major lifelong heart disease and its accompanying medications, Myrtle could not deal with the barefaced crime of intentional HIV infection by her ex-boyfriend, Roy. She finally decided that she was going back to where she had first found refuge. She went back to church, and she decided that this time she would marry the man who would always love her unconditionally. Accordingly, Myrtle was married on February 13, 2003, one day short of Valentine’s Day.
THE END
OFFICIAL WEBSITE
THENONSILENCEOFTHELAMB.COM
