Forgotten Birthdays

By

AJ

Part 21

Epilogue: A Forgotten Birthday Remembered

Tim walked through the cemetery to an area that he had not known existed until several days ago. He approached the site and found it to be overgrown with weeds. The small marker could barely be seen due to the tall grass that had grown up around it. He brushed the tall grass aside from the stone and revealed two words "Baby Drake." Even here, at this lonely gravesite, it was as if this particular child had been erased from memory. It was an injustice that never should have happened.

'I had a half brother that I never knew existed. In fact, I am the half brother and this . . . this little baby boy . . . was actually Janet and Jacob Drake's first son . . . While I'm the son of Jacob Drake and Mary Grayson.'

It was hard to face, hard to look at ones parentage and not feel ashamed or cheated in some way, but looking at the gravesite, the little baby boy who rested in this spot had been cheated even more. He never got to see his parents faces, never got to even celebrate his first birthday. Reading in his father's journal, how he and Mary Grayson made an arrangement where he would take custody of their son, while this little still born babe would be switched for a live birth . . . it made little sense. He was here and this little boy . . .

Tim had read on the birth certificate that this particular child had been born a few hour ahead of him. That made him his older brother despite the fact that they were born on the same day. It was still ironic that he was given the same name as this little boy that lay in this spot and yet the marker only reflected the fact that lying in this spot was a baby who's name . . . last name was Drake. There was no date . . . month or year that marked when this child had been born, stillborn or otherwise. For all its notice, the baby laying in this unforgotten spot had been born a couple of hundred years before and was buried soon after it was born. It was sad and sobering at the same time.

Tim knelt down in front of the grave and placed a bouquet of flowers and a teddy bear up against the stone. He didn't say anything at first. He then rose and staring at the small head stone he said, "Happy birthday big brother. I'll be by next year."

Walking away from the gravesite, Tim Wayne made a promise to himself, to never forget to celebrate his forsaken . . . no longer his forgotten, big brother's birthday, the first Timothy Jackson Drake.

End