Ghosts In The Desk

My sister and brother and I began packing up Mom's things last weekend, preparing for the renovations that have to be done to her unit. Once the house is vacant, the property management will come in and do a major spiffing -- new carpet, paint, counters, appliances... the works. Hopefully the improvements will bring a buyer!

I packed up the desk, an antique roll top that belonged to my great-grandfather. In the middle drawer, I found a file full of ghosts. It was stuffed with photographs, and old newspaper clippings, postcards, matchbooks, coasters -- the sorts of things you always keep to remember a vacation, or a wedding, or some family milestone.

Some of it was a little macabre, though. She had a letter from the Prince George's County Executive to my Pop, acknowledging a letter he sent praising the two detectives who were assigned to my rape case. Tucked in the folds of the letter were newspaper clippings from all the area papers (including the Diamondback!) following the case, from the first report of the rape to the story of the trial and conviction.

I threw them away. That's a record that needn't be kept.

We tossed most of the other old newspaper clippings, too. Wedding announcements, obituaries, various stories from various events that happened long ago. There didn't seem to be much point in keeping most of them; they were just old, yellowing pieces of newsprint.

We did keep one clipping, though. It was the news report of our older brother's death in 1950, when he was 9 years old. He was riding his bike home from school through the park when he was struck by a car and killed. My brother, even though he was only 4 at the time, remembers vividly when the police came to the house to tell my mom and dad. My older sister was 14, so she actually knew him.

My younger sister and I weren't born when Johnny died, so we only knew him from the portrait that hung in the hallway, from the stories and pictures we heard from Mom and Pop, and from the gravestone up in the cemetery.

But we learned on Saturday, from reading the clipping, that Johnny lay in the hospital morgue for four hours before he was identified. He wasn't carrying any identification; what kid carried ID in 1950? One of his classmates had to identify him before the police could inform my parents.

We never knew that part of the story; Mom and Pop never talked about it, not once, not ever.

It sent chills through us, knowing the full story. Shortly after we found the clipping, we found an old school binder of Johnny's, and a composition book of poems that he wrote, and the guest book from the funeral. Remnants of a brother that I never knew.

We kept all of it.