The Death Knell by Kaitlin Moorefield

     Taber Andrew Bain CC




The Death Knell

   “Ring the bell, ring the bell, Cousin Beecham is dead,” my great-uncle L.W.’s shaky voice boomed. He was in his 90s, wrinkled hands moving through the air as he recounted one of his poems. I was 8 years old and at a family reunion in North Carolina, 8 long hours away from my hometown in New Jersey. We were introduced to each other as the family poets, and I blushed with how adult, how substantial that simple proclamation made me feel. He began telling me the tale of his cousin’s premature death: how Beecham had fallen onto a drag saw, his heart spilling out of his body, blood splattering the snow. Back then, when someone died, they ran to the church to ring the bell, alerting the town of a beloved’s passing.
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    L.W.’s words cut through me. I imagined a frigid day, Beecham’s heart still beating on the snow that was slowly melting beneath the warm organ, and a church bell ringing through the frosty air. I imagined the townspeople craning their heads towards the sound to listen intently as it recounted the news, their own hearts beating feverishly in their chests, hoping it wasn’t one of their own. I devoured his poem and asked for my own copy, so that I could read it to my two brothers when I got back. Kienan was older than me by a mere 13 months, our energies intertwined with similarities; Connor was younger, more solemn and quiet than Kienan and I, forcing him to be an outsider in our duology. Still, over the years, we would profess this line time and time again together, with thick Southern accents, deep vibrato to add a twinge of satirical humor. Ring the bell, ring the bell, Cousin Beecham is dead.

    This is what I think about when my father calls that night to tell me what I already know: Kienan is dead. Ring the bell, ring the bell, repeats through my mind as I try to process what my dad is saying, try to process the events of earlier. 

    Our cousin, Chas, called to tell me there were three ambulances and a slew of cop cars at my parents’ house, a piece of me knew there was a heart being severed out of a body. When Chas called again, minutes later, as I paced an apartment that felt cold and desolate, he said Kienan was having a seizure and had stopped breathing. Halting my march, I coldly said, “Good. Let my parents watch.” I hadn’t realized the extent of it, the truth that Chas was trying to convey. Kienan wasn’t breathing, his heart wasn’t beating, as paramedics cracked his ribs to try to revive him. The heart ripped from a body, pulsating on the snow now, was my own: guilty and despairing and longing for life to be instilled in my brother once more.

    I wasn’t there to witness Kienan’s final moments of life—reaching his hand out to my mother as she retreated, unable to bear the weight of watching her firstborn perish. The sorbet in his bowl on the couch melted as the minutes ticked by, each second poised in the air like daggers, my father a silent henchman absorbing each agonizing blow as he witnessed the passage of time, the seepage of his son’s life. I wasn’t there to kneel as my brother took his final breaths, to hold his hand and apologize, to whisper that I loved him. I hadn’t spoken to my brother in a week, angry at him for defending his girlfriend over me, our final words unflinching and stubborn. Now I was in a city apart from my dying brother and there were loving, healing words left unsaid, captured on the tip of my tongue.

    I could not get the haunting utterance out of my mind: ring the bell, ring the bell, as I festered in my anguish and anger. I was angry at my brother, for choosing drugs, then choosing sobriety, then choosing a girl, then choosing drugs again. A cycle that ignored his self-worth, perpetuating ad infinitum, until this final round. 

    Over the summer, he had confessed he was bored with his decade-long habit. He dreamed of normalcy, a family, raising children of his own. I was angry he could so easily let this dream slip, under the influence now by wet pussy and confessions of love. I was angry because I had been the one to find him the last time he had a seizure. The night it occurred, I had been restless, unable to sleep, feeling an aura in the air, connected to my brother like a twin, when I heard him thrash about. I was angry because I was stuck in a new city, three hours away from my brother, while he lay dying in our childhood home, next to the closet that housed our toy soldiers and dollhouses. A few hours earlier, on my drive to D.C., I had heard a song Kienan often hummed; I was angry I had formed the message about the southern lilt ‘Black Velvet’ and never sent it, absorbed by my stubborn pride. It could have been the balm to our brief rift, an easy salve that would undo the words spoken earlier, a small patch in what is now a deep wound of regret. I was angry that he would dare die so young and leave me without my oldest and closest sibling. I am angry and I am thinking of a bell ringing through the cold March air; of blood pooling on snow in North Carolina, of chest compressions and ticking clocks and melting sorbet, and beating hearts, stilled by the smothering veil of death. 

    “What now?” I remember asking my dad on the phone, though only silence answered me.

    My dad goes home to scrub the basement floor, where a single stain of vomit crusts the carpet. My mother goes home to weep, haunted by visions of my brother reaching for her. And I am left alone in a city I do not know, imagining the hollow church bell echoing over the rolling hills of a small town in North Carolina all those years ago. I am left to imagine my mother’s screams ringing out through the halls of the emergency room, where they transferred Kienan after ninety minutes of trying to save him in our basement. They brought his stiffening body into a sterile hospital just so that they could pronounce him dead and save my parents the trouble of his lifeless form splayed out on their floor until a coroner could come. I am left to imagine Kienan’s beating heart halted by cocaine and years of heroin abuse and a poorly placed coronary artery, no true mirror of the intellect and kindness he possessed. The autopsy report states that his stomach contains “partially digested food, including rice”, his last meal so recent to death. I will never look at rice the same, the miniscule grains having the power to reduce me to tears. 

    There was no church for me to run to, but still, I imagined a hollow clanging, a death knell for my brother. Ring the bell, ring the bell. The clang echoes on.


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Kaitlin Moorefield is a born-and-bred New Jerseyan, currently residing in northern Virginia. She is a registered nurse turned stay-at-home mother and writer. Much of her writing focuses on character-driven narratives that often deal with loss and grief. She is working on a collection of short stories and is in the earliest stages of drafting a novel, while consistently churning out poetry and journal musings.

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