My Brother Randy, My "Pumpkin"

I grew up in the 1960's & 1970's, & back then, we listened to music on the stereo. Instead of popping in a CD, we pulled out the vinyl record & put it on the record player. I can remember all the times my brother Randy would ask for a "new needle", because he played so many records & moved that needle so many times, that it would often break. Randy was born with Down Syndrome. That meant that he was born with an extra chromosome, & with common characteristics that he shared with others who had Down's, such as almond-shaped eyes, shorter stature, stubby fingers, a high palate in the mouth, & of course, mental retardation. Anyway, Randy loved music. He loved it so much, that you could be a block away, & hear John Denver, Neil Diamond, The Beach Boys, & other singers of the time at decibels that would make an airport runway seem quiet!

On Saturday mornings, I remember waking up to the gentle tap, tap, tap on my head, & opening my eyes to see my brother standing over me & saying "Ca-wol, time to get up". My family called me Carol back then. They still do, but I have been calling myself Cari for many years now. I would look at the clock & if it was before 7AM, I would tell Randy it was too early & to go back to bed. I'd steal a few more minutes of sleep before the alarm, otherwise known as Randy's Stereo, began to sound. 

The Hat Says it All

Then before I knew it, I'd be smelling bacon & sausage cooking on the griddle, with animal pancakes to follow. I'd head downstairs to see my mother in her bathrobe, cooking breakfast & squeezing oranges from our orange tree, for our freshly squeezed orange juice which she put into teensy weensy little glasses that were smaller than what you would give to a toddler. I never quite understood why she put the juice into such small glasses until I had to start juicing the oranges myself, & realized how much effort goes into just getting a pint of juice. My father was usually sitting in his recliner chair, reading the morning paper, while my brother Randy was sitting at the table, waiting for breakfast. Sometimes my mother would mix it up & we would have eggs or oatmeal for breakfast, but we usually had pancakes or French toast, with bacon & sausage & freshly squeezed orange juice in those itty bitty glasses. 

I am the youngest of six children. By the time my brother was waking me up with the tap on my head on Saturday mornings, my older brother & sisters had already grown up & moved out of my parents' home. Mine was a close-knit family. Each of us kids were vastly different from one another, although we were raised the same way. My oldest sister was 15 years older than I was, with my older brother following a couple years later, then a sister a couple years after that, followed by another sister, then my brother Randy, & then me. A couple of my siblings were breech babies, & very large ones at that. My mother had a very difficult delivery which nearly killed her during a couple of her pregnancies. I was the smallest baby & the runt of the litter, at 8 pounds, 6 ounces. After giving birth to such large babies before me, the doctor urged my mother to stop having children, for the sake of her health. So glad that didn't happen, or my brother & I would not have been born. 

When Randy was born, it was the late 1950's, & doctors back then were not very supportive of children born with that condition. My parents were told that he would never live a normal life & would basically be like a vegetable, unable to function in life. They were advised to place Randy into an institution. They refused. He was their child, & he was going to live with the rest of the family. I came along a couple years later.  

As Randy grew older, my parents were again advised by doctors, to put him into an institution. They were told it was for his own good & would benefit him to be among people who were similar to him. Trusting the doctors to know what's best, they reluctantly agreed, & placed him into an institution a couple hours north of where we lived in Southern California. We would visit Randy on occasional weekends, & he would ask to come home. It was always hard to hear him ask to go home, knowing he couldn't. Eventually, my parents began to see that the living conditions where he lived were awful, & that the doctors had been terribly mistaken. Randy had been placed in a ward where people were banging their heads against the walls & making grunting noises, & there was nothing for the resident patients to do except to do nothing at all.

Randy as a teenager,  mid-1970's

That was no place for any person to have to live their life. The last straw came when Randy got really sick, which not only compromised his health, but the entire experience in that mental institution set him back to a state of intelligence far lower than he had possessed prior to getting sick. My parents pulled Randy out of that place & brought him home. There, he thrived, & attended a school for special kids like him, & he seemed very happy. 

As he got older however, he had a difficult time coping with the minor irritants that most people have learned to deal with, such as suddenly being surprised from behind when someone bumped into him with a shopping cart, or burning his mouth on a bite of hot pizza that he couldn't wait to eat. Randy would react to these frustrations by violently thrashing about, hitting anything & anyone in his path. As my parents grew older, it became more difficult to control his violent outbursts. Randy was not a dangerous person. Far from it. He would just have a grown-up version of a temper tantrum, with a thrashing about of his arms, & people would sometimes get caught up in the wake of that outburst. 

My parents found a wonderful group home, located about ten minutes away from where they lived, which housed about 3-4 other adults, just like Randy, who themselves also had physical outbursts. The home was beautiful, & set in a peaceful, family setting. Each resident either had his own room or shared a room with one other person. There were very wonderful people who were employed to stay with these residents & provide for their care. Randy was very happy there. He was among people who were trained to handle his temperament with love & understanding, & he received excellent care. He participated in lots of outings & activities which enriched his life & brought him joy. Randy loved the folks at this home, & they loved him. On weekends, he would come home to his own room at my parents' house, & they would devote the weekend to Randy-oriented activities. We tried to schedule family get-togethers when Randy was home, so that he could enjoy seeing family as well. 

Randy opening up his "surprise" Christmas present:
his beloved radio/cassette player.  My mom was next to him.

Here's the thing about Randy: He loved Christmas & birthdays, & he always was the first one ready to open gifts on Christmas morning. He always asked for the same gifts every time: movie videos, music CDs (or cassette tapes back in the day), radios, tape players, & batteries. There were times when he had close to five radios at one time. He was also a good judge of people. He didn't have much to say, but he could always tell a good person from a bad one, & if someone accepted him, then he accepted them. Simple as that. We could all learn from his example. Randy had a mischievous side to him too. 

Obviously too big to be sitting on our mother's lap,
this was still one of Randy's favorite forms of mischief!

If someone brought over a box of donuts, Randy would take a bite out of several of them, to ensure that he would get all those donuts, since nobody wanted to eat a donut with a bite taken out of it! If you were sitting at the table eating, & you turned away for a minute, you could turn back & find food missing off your plate, which Randy would help himself to.

Waiting patiently for Thanksgiving pie 

That's how my family knew when something wasn't right, that Thanksgiving of 2004. Randy had no appetite. That was not like him. He wasn't interested in playing his music nor watching his videos that he so enjoyed watching over & over, such as "Pete's Dragon" & "The Wizard of Oz". Randy spent the time on his bed, trying to get comfortable. He was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, which he contracted after a bout with the flu. A couple days later, he was released to return to his group home. About a week later, they admitted him to the hospital again, with congestive heart failure. Two hours later, he was dead, two days before his 46th birthday. My father had died just two months before, so this was especially hard on all of us, especially on my mother. I was staying with my sister in northern California, after I had filed for divorce from my first husband, in Washington state. My son had been staying with my nephew & his wife, & my daughter had been "kidnapped" by her father. I had moved back to California to enlist the help & emotional support of my family as I fought to regain custody of my daughter. I got the phone call from my sister-in-law, the day after I arrived from Washington, at my sister's house in Northern California. It all happened so fast. It was surreal. My sister-in-law was crying on the phone & she kept saying over & over that Randy was dead. I just couldn't believe it. It just happened so fast.

Randy was in excellent health. He was a bit overweight from his love of food, but he was not obese. One would describe him as having had a stocky build. His heart was healthy, which was good, considering that many people with Down Syndrome have heart problems. For someone who was overweight & got little exercise, he was remarkably strong. When he went bowling, he could get a strike, even if the ball was aimed at the gutter, because his throw was so strong, that the force of the throw propelled the ball to knock all the pins down when it was headed toward only one of them. I couldn't even come close to touching his score, no matter how carefully I aimed the ball. Randy also participated in Special Olympics when he was younger, & despite not working out, he could run like the wind. So it was such a surprise for him to die so suddenly, after he had been perfectly healthy just a couple weeks before. 

My mother was tortured with guilt because she had held Randy's arms down as he tried to yank the tubing & IV's out of his body. She kept telling him that he needed to leave them in so that he could get better, not knowing that he would not get better. After he died, she told me that she wished she had let him have his way in his last moments of life. She had no way of knowing he would die, but had he died after her letting him have his wishes honored, then she would have tortured herself with guilt, thinking that if only she'd have kept him hooked up to the wires & tubing, he might still be alive. We all grieved my brother's death very much. One sister in particular had a very close bond with him, & he was her "Fruitcake", as she was his. For her, his death hit especially hard. That's why it came as a surprise to me when about a year later, I had the most amazing dream, which happened to me, instead of my sister.

I was in a building, & I opened the door to go outside, & out in the hallway, there was Randy, smiling & beaming at me with the most beautiful smile. He was no longer about 5 feet 4 inches tall with a stocky build, but was instead a lean 5 feet 8 or 9. Gone was his husky, raspy voice that sounded like a prepubescent teen boy with a cold. Instead, he had the voice of a man, similar to the voice of my father & my other brother, yet distinctly his own. Randy's Down Syndrome physical features were completely gone, & there was intelligence in his sparkling eyes. I was so excited to see him, that I said "RANDY, it's so good to see you!!!". He said to me in perfect, unbroken speech, "Hi Carol. It's good to see you too!". He smiled at me as he said this, then we hugged, & when the hug was over, he was gone, & I woke up. Some may say that it was just a dream, but that dream was the most realistic dream I have ever had. It was as if I was completely awake & speaking to him in the flesh. I took that dream as God's way of letting me know that my brother was okay, & that he had a new body & was very, very happy. This story does have a happy ending, because I know I will see my brother again one day, & I'll be able to recognize him. He'll be the 5 feet 8 or 9 inch tall, handsome brown-haired man with the voice of my father, the sparkling hazel-colored eyes, & he'll be playing beautiful music in Heaven that would drown out the sounds of an airport runway!