Stand By Me
By
Berry Michel
I come from a very large family. My parents had a total of nine children. The youngest of which were me and my twin brother, Blueberry. My mother gave birth to us at the age of forty, so we were quite the surprise after already having seven children. Our older siblings were mostly adults by the time we were born. We were 8 years younger than our closest sibling. Two of my older sisters already had children of their own. Two of those children, were only two years older than me and my twin. Even though they were my nephew and niece, they were more like a brother and sister to me.
Back in the day the four of us were thick as thieves. It was me, my twin, Blueberry, my nephew, Orange, and my niece, Banana. Yes, these are code names as usual to protect identities, but I did give my niece the codename “Banana” because she hated bananas as a kid and still doesn’t eat them to this day. We were a four-kid wrecking crew. We played together, fought together, and caught the lashings of my mother’s belt often for the mischief we caused, together.
I remember one incident vividly when I was eight years old and all four of us were cutting up in my older brothers’ bedroom jumping and playing around loudly. My mother had already warned us to calm down and not be so loud, but the party kept going. Eventually, the ruckus led to injury and tears on my part. I fell while running around and I ended up falling headfirst into the bedroom door frame. I had a big open cut over my left eye. In fact, I still have the scar over my left eyebrow to remind me of that day.
I was crying because the eyebrow gash hurt like hell, and I was bleeding badly. My mother came bursting into the room to find out what was happening. I don’t know what came over me in that moment but instead of taking responsibility for my actions I quickly constructed a story to tell my mother when asked what happened. In response to her questioning, I told her that Banana had pushed me into the door because I didn’t want to say that I was running around and fell into the door frame on my own accord. My mother was furious, and you guessed it. Banana caught the belt for something she didn’t do. I don’t know if that moment started my streak of lying in tough situations that implicated me, but the moment clearly stands out.
Banana was mad of course because she knew the truth. Eventually, we put that betrayal behind us, and we got back to being the fantastic four until a few years later when everything changed and broke our tightknit group forever. At the age of twelve my nephew, Orange, came down with a rare form of leukemia. The blood disorder made him weak, and he was constantly in and out of the hospital for the next year. At the age of thirteen my nephew, Orange, lost his battle with the blood disorder and passed on to the afterlife. I can’t remember if this was my first experience with death and loss. However, this was the first time that I was personally hurt by it. I was only 10 years old at the time and I couldn’t understand why God would allow somebody so young to die.
At Orange’s funeral my older sister, who is also Jehovah’s Witness, convinced the Kingdom Hall to play the song “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King. Looking back at it, I know it must have taken a lot to convince that Kingdom Hall to play a secular song in Jehovah’s house. But they did and I am still grateful for that moment. My nephew, Orange, loved that song and he listened to it often in the last year of his life. I don’t know why it was his favorite song. But in that moment at the funeral, I thought it was perfect. Orange was probably really scared after he got sick and all he really wanted was what we all want when we are faced with challenging times. We all face death at some point and whether it’s a short life or a long one, we all long for someone to be standing there by us.
I was pretty upset when Orange died, and I had an issue with religion from that point on for many years after that. I just couldn’t make sense of it all as a young child. If you couldn’t count on God to take care of kids what was the point of religion in the first place and more importantly, who was going to be “standing by me”?
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