#1 Samuel Robert Stone

#1 Samuel Robert Stone

     It was Sunday morning and a heavy feeling like six inches of heavy, wet snow blanketed the inside of our home. Dad met me in the front room as I waded through my sorrow on the way to my parents’ bedroom where my little brother, Sammy, laid.  Mark and Larry were out doing the paper route: a four-square block delivery of about thirty-five copies of the Herald Journal: ad-filled, chubby chunks of newsprint each weighing as much as a twenty-inch rainbow trout.  Their canvas “paper” bags were stuffed completely and balanced precariously on the handle bars of their thick-tired bikes.  There would be no riding of those heavily-ladened bicycles on that May morning, only pushing and kick-standing, and walking up to each doorstep—at least until most of the papers were delivered.  It was a trail of tears.

     “Walt, come into our bedroom.  Sammy passed away during the night.  Come and see him,” Dad said.

     He was lying on his back on a small moveable bed with his head near the door and feet toward the middle of the room.  There was a white wash-cloth on his forehead. Mom was standing there.  She had been crying.

     “He doesn’t have to suffer anymore,” she said.  “He was sick for a long time and now he is in heaven.” 

     “He was having a hard time breathing last night.  We listened as he struggled with his breaths.  Then he took a deep breath.  And then he just stopped breathing.”  Dad said.  “We don’t want you to be sad,” they said together.  We stood there and looked at his pale and swollen face.  His closed, dark eyelids stood as tokens of many months of pain, needles, medications, spinal taps, and trips to the hospital, and blood transfusions, all attempting to rid his body of cancer.  Dad tenderly turned the wash cloth on Sammy’s forehead (one last time), a gesture of my mom’s and dad’s enduring love and care that had been repeated through countless days and nights.

     I dressed quickly and went out to meet Mark and Larry at the end of the paper route.  As I rode my bike down to the corner, I soon saw Mark and Larry, now riding their bikes, only a few papers remaining in their bags. They were making their last few deliveries. As they approached, I saw their tear stained faces telling me they had also visited our parents’ bedroom.  Nothing was said as we turned for home.

(Samuel Robert Stone was born March 21, 1956.  He died May 7, 1961 after battling cancer for a year.)