Fear

Our parents were young, but never once did they hint they would have wanted it any other way. And we always knew we were loved, even if no one said the words out loud. Which we didn’t. Despite that, I grew up with an intuitive mistrust of my parents that seemed always to exist. I suppose I felt as safe and looked after as most other kids in the 1980s, but there were times I wondered if they had any idea what they were doing. It wasn’t until I became a parent myself that I finally understood the truth. Of course they didn’t know what they were doing- none of us do.

I had a recurring nightmare throughout childhood that we were at something like the county fair and I got separated from my family. It was a warm summer night, the sky lit up by the carnival lights, and there were people everywhere. I would frantically look for Mom, Dad, Josh, and Ben, calling out their names. Finally, I’d make eye contact with one of them, usually Mom, and she would look at me as if she had no idea who I was. Then, she’d turn away and disappear into the crowd. My rational mind said my parents and brothers would always be there, but my subconscious wasn’t so sure.

The most anxiety-inducing fear was that something would happen to one of my brothers, and this one plagued me as much during waking hours as it did at night. When I was seven, we drove to Arizona because Dad had to attend a school for the National Guard at Fort Huachuca. On the road trip home, we visited many tourist sites, but the memory that still stands out over forty years later is how afraid I was at the Grand Canyon. We stopped at several scenic lookouts. Ben was only two and I was sure he was going to stumble over the edge of one of the many drop-offs and fall to his death. I was convinced our parents weren’t watching him closely enough so I obsessively followed him around, holding his little toddler hand so tight that he cried.

Real-life tragedies around us fed the worry for my brothers. When Josh was in 8th grade, he shared a locker with a boy who died during the school year. He was in an ATV accident, had hemophilia, and was killed by internal bleeding. We went to the funeral home for his visitation, and from the doorway I could see the top of his head, just elevated over the edge of the casket. Then I noticed his older sister and parents standing in the receiving line. They looked shattered. Completely broken. It was in their body language and on their faces. I couldn’t go up and pay my respects. I was frozen. I asked Mom if I could go outside and wait in the car. I kept thinking that it could be me standing there. My brothers loved ATVs and the three of us tended toward recklessness. One of them could easily get into an accident and die, and then I’d be the sister standing there with tears streaming down my face. Mom and Dad would be devastated. That could be us.

A year later, Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped while riding his bike home from a convenience store that he’d gone to with his brother and a friend. It happened in a town only 38 miles away from where we lived. Jacob was eleven. Ben was also eleven at the time. A new fear was born: my little brother could be kidnapped. He was small for his age and so cute. My friends always gushed about how adorable he was.

Before Jacob Wetterling, I loved shopping at the Crossroads Mall in St. Cloud. Josh and Ben would go off on their own, and Mom and I would shop together. After the kidnapping, going to the mall wasn’t as fun anymore. We always drove by a house with “Jacob’s Hope” written in Christmas lights on the garage so you could see it from the highway. It still makes me emotional to think of it. Once we arrived at the mall, I was worried that someone would take Ben when Josh wasn’t paying attention. Before parting, we would designate a meeting place and time, and I would be a nervous wreck until we met up again.

I would lie awake at night, even after leaving for college, and wonder if my fears were premonitions. Whenever my brothers and I were reunited after extended periods apart, I felt such a sense of relief that the two of them were okay. Then, after Josh died, I wondered if by allowing the fears to take up space in my consciousness for so long, I had unknowingly willed something terrible to happen. Or perhaps they were preparing me for the inevitable. Because the truth is that we were never going to have forever. No one does.