thedrifter
10-21-07, 07:05 AM
Today: October 21, 2007 at 1:29:44 PDT
ALWAYS HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER
The struggle: How to let go of the war without letting go of his twin's memory
By J. Patrick Coolican
Las Vegas Sun
Joel Jaime agonizes about going to his parents' house. He's afraid they look at him and see his dead brother.
They were 22-year-old Marines deployed in the same battalion near Ramadi, Iraq, in June 2005 when Jesse Jaime, Joel's identical twin, was killed near their post by a roadside bomb.
Someone woke Joel and asked, "Did you hear that blast?"
"I can't describe the feeling. I felt it in my stomach. Something didn't feel right."
Joel paced and smoked.
Ordered to the command post, he took the longest walk of his life, before learning his brother was dead.
"And all I was saying was, 'Don't tell me that, don't tell me that.' The only thing that came to my mind was my parents, my mom. Like, how the hell was I going to tell them this? I felt like a little kid that did something bad and couldn't go home. I didn't know how I'd go home. I'm alive, well and standing, and bringing my brother home in a body bag."
Two Humvee ambulances arrived, carrying five black body bags.
"I'm used to seeing those body bags. I've seen them before. But the thing that was going through my head was, which one was my brother? I didn't know which one it was."
Then they unloaded two large red bags marked "biohazard." His colonel told him it was the clothes of the dead. Joel knew better: They were filled with body parts.
Before he climbed on the helicopter with his dead brother, Joel looked the colonel in the eye and said the only thing he could think to say: "It was an honor serving in your battalion." The colonel looked at Joel and said nothing.
Once home in Henderson, Joel encountered awkward silences from friends and relatives. And who could blame them? What is there to say about pain like this?
Joel didn't care. He was in mission mode. Get his brother home and buried.
The next eight days were a haze of activity and adrenaline and denial.
The body arrived and there were Palm Mortuary and the funeral service and then the burial in Boulder City and there were Marines all around and the 21-gun salute.
Part of Joel thought it wasn't real, and he and his friend Carlos hoped maybe his brother was playing an elaborate and really thoughtless ruse on everyone.
"And then it just hit me after everybody was walking away and I was getting back in that limo. This is for real. This is it. My mission's done. What am I going to do now?"
• • •
Little kids playing football. That's Joel's first memory of Jesse.
Born to Cuban immigrants, they had a mind-meld, like many twins. One would be thinking of something, and the other would say it.
At Chaparral High School, Joel (pronounced Jo-El) was hard, emotionally walled - and yet met his wife, Sahvanna, there, while the romantic, softer Jesse kept searching for a girl to fall in love with. He once gave Joel a framed sentiment with a photo and a handwritten note on the back: "Bro I'll always be with you no matter where you're at."
Joel enlisted first, in 2001, and then Jesse in 2002. (At Jesse's boot camp graduation, Joel got yelled at for being out of uniform because the sergeant had the two confused. That happened a lot.)
Jesse cried at the graduation when they played "Amazing Grace." Joel knew he would.
Now they were both Marines. Those were the best times, shared over Jager bombs poured at happy hours.
On their 21st birthday Joel was in Fallujah while Jesse partied in Guam. Jesse e-mailed Joel photos. Joel was just happy Jesse could celebrate for the two of them.
Joel was going to be a Marine lifer, but Jesse wanted to become a Las Vegas Metro Police officer. So Joel changed his mind. They'd get out together after their tour, and they'd move home and become police officers.
They'd raise their kids together. And maybe they wouldn't talk about it, but they'd know things about each other and the world no one else would know.
• • •
When his Marine unit returned to Camp Pendleton in October 2005, Joel went to California to greet the guys. And he fantasized that his brother would be on that plane.
"For one second, I could see my brother coming, for that one second I was looking for my brother. Then I realized he's not here. He's not walking with my buddies."
Joel got a security job at Imperial Palace. Life was empty, but still he felt like his soul was careening, a richocheting bullet nearly wounding his loved ones.
"I felt like I was accomplishing nothing, like I was going down a black hole."
Anger always festered, an inch below the surface.
He started arguments with his wife so she would leave him alone. Alone, he couldn't hurt anyone.
After three tours in Iraq, Sahvanna said, he was different.
There were occasional outbursts, walls now marked by fist-size holes.
There were nightmares about Iraq. He was afraid to sleep.
He retained his Marine vigilance. Innocuous roadside debris reminded him - bam! - of Iraq.
It was all so exhausting.
When a woman fell from the 16th story at Imperial Palace he was one of the first at the scene.
At first, he was oblivious. Seeing dead bodies was commonplace for him.
"Then I got home that night and I could see that lady's face. Why did that lady bother me so much? Then I thought about my brother."
He sank deeper into that black hole, now reliving the spring 2004 offensive against Fallujah, the improvised explosive that hit his Humvee and rattled his cage, the firefights and ambushes. A few nights later he was smothered by a full-scale anxiety attack. He was nauseated, racked with fear. Iraq was in his bones.
Sahvanna took him to the emergency room and he wound up at the VA, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
There's no cure.
• • •
Neuroscientists think that when we experience a traumatic event, our brains are flooded with adrenaline like compounds called norepinephrine. The hormone acts like a permanent ink, inscribing memories on the brain.
Evolutionary biologists say this makes sense: A man walking in the woods who encounters a dangerous predator would want to remember details of the encounter: where it happened, what it smelled like, the predator's exact capacities.
Too much of this, though, short-circuits the brain's ability to discriminate between hostile situations and normal everyday social life. So even a box alongside Eastern Avenue can evoke the flight-or-fight response, flooding the body with adrenaline. The adrenaline can trigger memories of the original traumatic event or life like nightmares during sleep. It's all a painful feedback loop, often accompanied, for many veterans, by anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
In short, for a small percentage of veterans, the war rages at home.
• • •
The best thing for Joel's health would be to let the war go.
But there's the cruel paradox: Forgetting Iraq, where he spent his last days with his brother, would be killing Jesse's memory.
"Just don't forget him," he tells his friends. He has a tribute to Jesse inked on his back: a helmet on a rifle. He went to three tattoo places before he found the right artist. It had to be perfect.
Sometimes Joel sees his brother in dreams. Sometimes he tries to summon him.
"I had this one dream, it wasn't like a conversation, it was like we were doing something together. Like our lives were still going on, like he was never killed in action.
"My friend Carlos called me up one time, and said, 'Hey man, I saw your brother in my dreams, he visited me in my dreams. He was pretty much sitting there talking. Me, my brother a couple other friends, telling us he's all right, he's good, don't be sad anymore. You know, just to know he's OK. It was like a message sent from him to me."
This message from Jesse gave Joel some peace, but he wants to hear it himself.
"I went to bed thinking, 'Hey, dude, come visit me. I want to see you.' Once in awhile I'll have a dream where he and I are doing something. The message did come to Carlos. Every once in awhile I want to get to sleep and have my brother talking to me."
Joel says, almost with a sense of satisfaction, that the void at the center of his being will never be filled.
"It could be 20 years down the road, and I'll sit there and it'll still hurt. Some people say it will get better. I don't think so. There's always that night, what happened that night. Did he feel anything? Did he know it was coming? Some things I just want to know from him. Personally, I don't think it will go away."
He thinks a lot about all the things they would've been doing together - the ballgames and the fishing at Lake Mead, and a career at Metro.
But he's a Marine, and that helps Joel get through the day, work through the mystery of needing to at once remember and forget.
"I tried to take it like my brother wasn't just the only brother I lost. He still lives through me. I can't forget that saying. Marine for life. No matter what. He's still gone, but the Marine Corps lives and that means he's living on along with all the other Marines. And that gives me a sense of peace and stuff."
Someday, when they're more settled, when Sahvanna has her criminal justice degree and a job as a juvenile probation officer and Joel is ready, they'll have a family of their own.
Sahvanna's mom is a twin.
So Sahvanna and Joel might have twins.
Sun researcher Mary Manning contributed to this report.
J. Patrick Coolican can be reached at 259-8814 or at patrick.coolican@lasvegassun.com.
Ellie
ALWAYS HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER
The struggle: How to let go of the war without letting go of his twin's memory
By J. Patrick Coolican
Las Vegas Sun
Joel Jaime agonizes about going to his parents' house. He's afraid they look at him and see his dead brother.
They were 22-year-old Marines deployed in the same battalion near Ramadi, Iraq, in June 2005 when Jesse Jaime, Joel's identical twin, was killed near their post by a roadside bomb.
Someone woke Joel and asked, "Did you hear that blast?"
"I can't describe the feeling. I felt it in my stomach. Something didn't feel right."
Joel paced and smoked.
Ordered to the command post, he took the longest walk of his life, before learning his brother was dead.
"And all I was saying was, 'Don't tell me that, don't tell me that.' The only thing that came to my mind was my parents, my mom. Like, how the hell was I going to tell them this? I felt like a little kid that did something bad and couldn't go home. I didn't know how I'd go home. I'm alive, well and standing, and bringing my brother home in a body bag."
Two Humvee ambulances arrived, carrying five black body bags.
"I'm used to seeing those body bags. I've seen them before. But the thing that was going through my head was, which one was my brother? I didn't know which one it was."
Then they unloaded two large red bags marked "biohazard." His colonel told him it was the clothes of the dead. Joel knew better: They were filled with body parts.
Before he climbed on the helicopter with his dead brother, Joel looked the colonel in the eye and said the only thing he could think to say: "It was an honor serving in your battalion." The colonel looked at Joel and said nothing.
Once home in Henderson, Joel encountered awkward silences from friends and relatives. And who could blame them? What is there to say about pain like this?
Joel didn't care. He was in mission mode. Get his brother home and buried.
The next eight days were a haze of activity and adrenaline and denial.
The body arrived and there were Palm Mortuary and the funeral service and then the burial in Boulder City and there were Marines all around and the 21-gun salute.
Part of Joel thought it wasn't real, and he and his friend Carlos hoped maybe his brother was playing an elaborate and really thoughtless ruse on everyone.
"And then it just hit me after everybody was walking away and I was getting back in that limo. This is for real. This is it. My mission's done. What am I going to do now?"
• • •
Little kids playing football. That's Joel's first memory of Jesse.
Born to Cuban immigrants, they had a mind-meld, like many twins. One would be thinking of something, and the other would say it.
At Chaparral High School, Joel (pronounced Jo-El) was hard, emotionally walled - and yet met his wife, Sahvanna, there, while the romantic, softer Jesse kept searching for a girl to fall in love with. He once gave Joel a framed sentiment with a photo and a handwritten note on the back: "Bro I'll always be with you no matter where you're at."
Joel enlisted first, in 2001, and then Jesse in 2002. (At Jesse's boot camp graduation, Joel got yelled at for being out of uniform because the sergeant had the two confused. That happened a lot.)
Jesse cried at the graduation when they played "Amazing Grace." Joel knew he would.
Now they were both Marines. Those were the best times, shared over Jager bombs poured at happy hours.
On their 21st birthday Joel was in Fallujah while Jesse partied in Guam. Jesse e-mailed Joel photos. Joel was just happy Jesse could celebrate for the two of them.
Joel was going to be a Marine lifer, but Jesse wanted to become a Las Vegas Metro Police officer. So Joel changed his mind. They'd get out together after their tour, and they'd move home and become police officers.
They'd raise their kids together. And maybe they wouldn't talk about it, but they'd know things about each other and the world no one else would know.
• • •
When his Marine unit returned to Camp Pendleton in October 2005, Joel went to California to greet the guys. And he fantasized that his brother would be on that plane.
"For one second, I could see my brother coming, for that one second I was looking for my brother. Then I realized he's not here. He's not walking with my buddies."
Joel got a security job at Imperial Palace. Life was empty, but still he felt like his soul was careening, a richocheting bullet nearly wounding his loved ones.
"I felt like I was accomplishing nothing, like I was going down a black hole."
Anger always festered, an inch below the surface.
He started arguments with his wife so she would leave him alone. Alone, he couldn't hurt anyone.
After three tours in Iraq, Sahvanna said, he was different.
There were occasional outbursts, walls now marked by fist-size holes.
There were nightmares about Iraq. He was afraid to sleep.
He retained his Marine vigilance. Innocuous roadside debris reminded him - bam! - of Iraq.
It was all so exhausting.
When a woman fell from the 16th story at Imperial Palace he was one of the first at the scene.
At first, he was oblivious. Seeing dead bodies was commonplace for him.
"Then I got home that night and I could see that lady's face. Why did that lady bother me so much? Then I thought about my brother."
He sank deeper into that black hole, now reliving the spring 2004 offensive against Fallujah, the improvised explosive that hit his Humvee and rattled his cage, the firefights and ambushes. A few nights later he was smothered by a full-scale anxiety attack. He was nauseated, racked with fear. Iraq was in his bones.
Sahvanna took him to the emergency room and he wound up at the VA, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
There's no cure.
• • •
Neuroscientists think that when we experience a traumatic event, our brains are flooded with adrenaline like compounds called norepinephrine. The hormone acts like a permanent ink, inscribing memories on the brain.
Evolutionary biologists say this makes sense: A man walking in the woods who encounters a dangerous predator would want to remember details of the encounter: where it happened, what it smelled like, the predator's exact capacities.
Too much of this, though, short-circuits the brain's ability to discriminate between hostile situations and normal everyday social life. So even a box alongside Eastern Avenue can evoke the flight-or-fight response, flooding the body with adrenaline. The adrenaline can trigger memories of the original traumatic event or life like nightmares during sleep. It's all a painful feedback loop, often accompanied, for many veterans, by anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
In short, for a small percentage of veterans, the war rages at home.
• • •
The best thing for Joel's health would be to let the war go.
But there's the cruel paradox: Forgetting Iraq, where he spent his last days with his brother, would be killing Jesse's memory.
"Just don't forget him," he tells his friends. He has a tribute to Jesse inked on his back: a helmet on a rifle. He went to three tattoo places before he found the right artist. It had to be perfect.
Sometimes Joel sees his brother in dreams. Sometimes he tries to summon him.
"I had this one dream, it wasn't like a conversation, it was like we were doing something together. Like our lives were still going on, like he was never killed in action.
"My friend Carlos called me up one time, and said, 'Hey man, I saw your brother in my dreams, he visited me in my dreams. He was pretty much sitting there talking. Me, my brother a couple other friends, telling us he's all right, he's good, don't be sad anymore. You know, just to know he's OK. It was like a message sent from him to me."
This message from Jesse gave Joel some peace, but he wants to hear it himself.
"I went to bed thinking, 'Hey, dude, come visit me. I want to see you.' Once in awhile I'll have a dream where he and I are doing something. The message did come to Carlos. Every once in awhile I want to get to sleep and have my brother talking to me."
Joel says, almost with a sense of satisfaction, that the void at the center of his being will never be filled.
"It could be 20 years down the road, and I'll sit there and it'll still hurt. Some people say it will get better. I don't think so. There's always that night, what happened that night. Did he feel anything? Did he know it was coming? Some things I just want to know from him. Personally, I don't think it will go away."
He thinks a lot about all the things they would've been doing together - the ballgames and the fishing at Lake Mead, and a career at Metro.
But he's a Marine, and that helps Joel get through the day, work through the mystery of needing to at once remember and forget.
"I tried to take it like my brother wasn't just the only brother I lost. He still lives through me. I can't forget that saying. Marine for life. No matter what. He's still gone, but the Marine Corps lives and that means he's living on along with all the other Marines. And that gives me a sense of peace and stuff."
Someday, when they're more settled, when Sahvanna has her criminal justice degree and a job as a juvenile probation officer and Joel is ready, they'll have a family of their own.
Sahvanna's mom is a twin.
So Sahvanna and Joel might have twins.
Sun researcher Mary Manning contributed to this report.
J. Patrick Coolican can be reached at 259-8814 or at patrick.coolican@lasvegassun.com.
Ellie