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By Sarah Macaraeg
“Memory is your body as it was in the world and the world as it was and will be.” Hilton Als
When I was eleven, my brother came home from the Army. Like many veterans, he returned to small town life an entirely different person, but his was a metamorphosis driven not by war and not even by militarism. He came home with an honorable discharge and a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
There had been a phone call prior. In my memory I see my mom answering, notice her hand clenching the phone, fingers wrapping around the cord, voice shaking. My brother was hospitalized, someone from the Veterans Administration told her, at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital outside of Chicago.
He was departing to a base in Germany when I last saw him, and on his way out the door I offered him a newly-minted carefully scissor-cut school photo of me. I had considered the exact size appropriate, in the serious way of 6th graders. He smiled, I remember, and placed the photo in a Velcro wallet where it fit perfectly and sat alongside little else, bringing it with him to Europe. (more…)
