June 7th is the birthday of this guy, “The Traveler”, as the painting is titled. He’d have been 60 years young. A sun doesn’t rise where I don’t give him gentle hell for bowing out of the life experience before aging became a noticeable annoyance. “If I have to go through it, you sonofabit@%#, then so should you,” is the telepathic jab. Then again, he was never one to sit around and complain about any aches or pains… anything, really.
His given name was Timothy Charles Dolan. He was my brother. We were a little over a year apart, almost Irish twins… sort of. I painted this piece from a 4″ by 5″ photograph of him, an image that was the centerpiece of the picture memorial at his funeral. It was a photo I’d never seen before and like so many others in attendance at his service, I, too, had to have a copy. The photographer, his dear friend, Jane, had simply captured Tim. Tim in his fullest, spirited, adventurous, classic Gemini essence as he stuck his head out of a train window somewhere in Africa. Everyone who saw this photo wanted to take Tim home with them, frame him and feel soothed that he was still somehow around, coming for a visit soon. Traveling was his juice to be sure, seeing the many wonders of the planet, yet his itinerary would always include time with family and friends. He could do that with such ease, the free-flowing, breezy, can’t-pin-me-down air sign that he was. Also, it didn’t hurt that he was unmarried, had no kids, no strings. The world was still his relished oyster.
His sudden death in late August of 2001 was like an episode out of “The Twilight Zone”. Time and space were completely altered. On that fateful September 11th I vividly remember watching, in real time, from my Mother’s home in Pennsylvania, the plane as it flew into the tower of the World Trade Center. Tim’s funeral had been three days earlier, and that morning, as I watched the horrifying images on TV I felt nothing. I mean, I had the awareness that this was catastrophic, yet I was already in traumatic shut down mode. “So what. Nothing more can or will hurt me,” was my inner dialogue. Pain couldn’t get any greater for me, my family or his friends. You wanna see tuck and roll, I’ll show you tuck and roll. Numb. Get out of the way of anymore pain… and fast. If I felt anything, it was relief that my younger brother, who worked at the World Trade Center, and had taken time off from the job, was still asleep in my Mother’s guest bedroom, and all those who’d come into town for Tim’s funeral had flown safely out of Newark Airport the day before. One day later and they may have been on those fated planes. Phew.
” ‘Why didn’t God take me instead?’, asked a brokenhearted Uncle, an intimidating Philadelphia litigator who ruled the courtrooms with flare and logic. His brain had short circuited because well, trauma has no logic.”
A non-symptomatic and therefore undetected heart condition had caused Tim’s blood pressure to suddenly drop. He passed out and his heart just didn’t pump enough blood to his brain for him to regain consciousness again. This is a moment where “stand clear” with paddles, or a good CPR thump would have probably worked, jolting his heart to beat normally again, but he was alone, so he just naturally and peacefully moved toward the Light instead. “As if”, a kind physician explained the cardiac anomaly to me, “he simply went to sleep and never woke up.” No unnecessary suffering. No muss, no fuss. Very Tim.
All of this happened in his flat in Brussels, where he was living at the time. As I said, he was by himself, having just seen a newer woman in his life off to the states, where she carried on with a full career and ties there. They’d returned from a fabulous trip to Greece just days before. According to the Brussel’s police and coroner reports he transitioned sometime in the late evening hours. The television was still on, he’d showered, had his still full, before bedtime glass of milk on the coffee table in front of him, folded laundry was piled on the made-up bed. Nothing foul or self-inflicted at play, simply habits as usual in readiness for the next day. Once in the Army, always in the Army. It’s crazy what you remember in heightened times. As the news and all the details of his passing broke, I recalled that he’d done the bedtime milk ritual since we were teens. The commercials had obviously imprinted his young mind even then — several glasses of milk a day for your good health — a belief that he’d adopted and worked for him. Maybe if he’d actually finished his nighttime glass… ahh, we’ll never know.
This traumatic event blew my very large, beautiful, feelings-close-to-the-vest, Irish-American clan to smithereens, much as a tsunami wave builds and decimates everything in sight. The standard, go-to alcohol consumption in good times and in bad increased exponentially. Those who’d quit smoking started up again — screw the family examples of horrific deaths from lung cancer! And oh, yes, someone, anyone had to be blamed; the damn Belgian authorities for taking so long to release Tim’s body back to the states, the U.S. Embassy in Brussels for not acting quickly enough on behalf of this American veteran and his bereaved, demanding, entitled family. Blame, anger, shock were on overdrive. How could this invincible, seemingly robust, 42 year-old, bigger than life, lover of life guy be gone? It made no fracking sense. “Why didn’t God take me instead?”, asked a brokenhearted Uncle, an intimidating Philadelphia litigator who ruled the courtrooms with flare and unquestioning logic. His brain had short circuited because well, trauma has no logic.
Indeed, if I’ve learned anything in making “Stranger At Home”, I’ve learned that in a traumatic event, expected or unexpected, from the most heinous of circumstances to those natural losses that are part and parcel of the trajectory of the life experience, the brain does short circuit and the central nervous system goes whack. A real and unseen emotional/psychological injury occurs. As a result, perceptually, everything trusted, everything known to be safe, fair and good can shift into a more endangered, duck and cover, shoe is going to drop viewpoint. Surviving over thriving can take over and become the new norm. Sustainable peace, happiness, faith, trust — there’s absolutely no gear for them, I’ve learned, in survival mode. Unacknowledged, untreated, unhealed, these traumas that every human being experiences, be it the loss of a first love, a pet, a job, a home, one’s health, all the way up the scale to the highly extreme; the loss of a protected and safe childhood, the loss of a parent, a spouse, a child, a colleague on the battlefield — untended, these wounds can claim our lives rather than re-purpose and re-story (store) them.
I’m proud to say that I’ve done a lot of personal restoration and re-storying work since Tim’s passing, since another brother’s sudden death much earlier in my life, an overlapping, untreated family trauma for sure. Both of these events were nobody’s fault. They were life on life’s terms, yet it took me a long while, and an emotional breakdown, or as my hero, Brene Brown re-stories for herself, “a spiritual awakening”, to choose to get help and begin to view my life through a new lens, the lens of a kinder, compassionate, ever-growing understanding of the nature of trauma — my own events and the events of others. It is no surprise that I decided to make a film about it.
Creative expression, storytelling — these have been in my toolbox of emotional processing for as long as I can remember. They’ve saved me even when I didn’t know or understand that I needed to honestly face and heal “the thing behind the thing”, as a loving sponsor of mine says. Balancing the tuck and roll with more sit and stay, you know? Meditation, close contact with my support structures and self care really helps to maintain that balance. Yet it’s my art therapy — writing, painting, filmmaking — that make it possible for me to widen out and see with expanded perspective how the train ride of the resilient, fragile, magnificent, sad, joyous human experience goes — how my own train runs. Now, one day at a time, with the help of a God of my understanding, with greater ease and sustainability than ever before, I can look for and typically find the goodness, wonder and serenity in life.
Love,
Beth
P.S. I sure widened out with this painting of Tim — went REALLY big, 28″ by 22″, acrylic on hardboard. My love to the Watson Family for giving the piece a home in Good Ole London Town — both a family and a city Tim loved mightily. Happy Birthday in heaven, Brother!
Former U.S. Army Captain Timothy C. Dolan, a graduate of West Point Military Academy went on to honorably serve directly under General Colin Powell while stationed during non-conflict times in Germany in the early to mid 1980’s.
Written by Beth Dolan, Producer of “Stranger At Home”
For prints of “The Traveler” and other painted stories: remesarartworks.com
