Reflections

I did not know my younger brother Robert who died in hospital, just after being born. He never came home, I never played with him. Only a toddler myself, self- centred. I can’t even remember Mother’s pregnancy. I had no knowledge of my absent brother.

Years later, coming home from school, I found my Mother crying. She saw my own distress to see her tears. Hugged me, sat me down and spoke about the brother I’d not known and how a truant officer had called to ask why Robert did not go to school when he turned five.

She told me of the brother I’d not known. The nine months she had carried him. How fine he was when first she held him. How quickly he had sickened and then died. I looked into my Mother’s face - Tears like liquid stars, a constellation forming in my firmament