Once we brought shovels and planted holly bushes, which gave us something to do. Once, when we got out, slammed the car doors, my sister started crying, inconsolable. She was only two or three. Did we teach you to do this? we wondered. That this is what you are supposed to do here?

She had been a baby, just turned one, and had the chicken pox, when he died. I had it first, gave it to her, the itchiness and oatmeal baths, and my mother wonders sometimes still whether this was the cause—a strain of virus in our house that he wasn’t able to fend off. My sister doesn’t talk about him often but once I heard her say, “No one knows that I had a brother who died. It isn’t fair.”

My mother is quick to point out that my sister can’t really remember. This is true, but I can’t really remember that much, either. What I mean is: mostly I remember him dying. I remember that day at the hospital. I remember standing outside of the car, before I had any idea what was happening, and whispering to my imaginary friend, “If Paul dies, I know that I’ll be really sad,” calculating that now I was insured against the worst. I remember crying, screaming, as my father took my hand and led me through the hospital hallways. Mostly, though, I remember seeing my brother lying there in that dark hospital room. I’d never seen a dead person before but I knew that’s what he was.

I can’t remember seeing the diamond-shaped hole they cut in his throat to insert a tube, to help with the breathing. I can remember seeing him that last time but I can’t remember the hole, and I’m fairly certain that if I can’t remember this detail, a bloody hole cut in my three-year-old brother’s throat, I cannot be relied upon to remember much else.

I remember the dreams I had, afterward. We would be alone together and I would be shaking him, but there was no way I could stop his eyes from rolling back into his head. I would wake up, devastated and too embarrassed to tell anyone. Later, my mother would tell me about her dreams, of dropping babies over the banister; of my brother alive, but missing an arm; of my brother buried alive, and her going with my grandfather to dig him up. These days I can hardly distinguish which dreams were hers and which were mine.