One year ago today
Today is the one year anniversary of the worse day in my life, when I got a call from my niece telling me that my brother was dead. It has been a really difficult year, and frankly it is unbelievable that a full year has come and gone. And it is funny-sad-weird how angry I am, yet dying is a normal part of living right? What is there to be angry about? All the couch psychologists out there are thinking that this is simply one of the normal cycles and seasons of grieving and they would be right and they would be wrong.
My brother was not a simple person. Life could never measure up to his ideals, and so crushed by the harsh realities, he instead lived life of self medication, on the edge of depression and anger for decades. With the decades of self medication came a host a medical ills and pains and chronic conditions that self-medicating only made worse and worse. I am glad that I spent some good quality time with him in his last years. I am thankful that my wife gave me the freedom to do so.
The most horrible and difficult thing I ever had to do in my life was call my parents one year ago today, and watch them melt before my eyes as I told them their youngest son was gone forever. There is simply a big black hole in the fabric of life that was once him, for all of us. There is no getting it back, there is no fixing it, there are no answers for a life now gone.
As I sit here on the same balcony, where I received the news that he was gone, I can't help but think that he had lots of living left to accomplish, he is missing so many wonderful things in his girls lives, in his granddaughters lives, in my life, in my parents lives. 51 years is not nearly enough to finish this thing we call life. And now the lives of all of us are changed for forever, because he is not here to share it with us.
Today is the one year anniversary of the worse day in my life, when I got a call from my niece telling me that my brother was dead. It has been a really difficult year, and frankly it is unbelievable that a full year has come and gone. And it is funny-sad-weird how angry I am, yet dying is a normal part of living right? What is there to be angry about? All the couch psychologists out there are thinking that this is simply one of the normal cycles and seasons of grieving and they would be right and they would be wrong.
My brother was not a simple person. Life could never measure up to his ideals, and so crushed by the harsh realities, he instead lived life of self medication, on the edge of depression and anger for decades. With the decades of self medication came a host a medical ills and pains and chronic conditions that self-medicating only made worse and worse. I am glad that I spent some good quality time with him in his last years. I am thankful that my wife gave me the freedom to do so.
The most horrible and difficult thing I ever had to do in my life was call my parents one year ago today, and watch them melt before my eyes as I told them their youngest son was gone forever. There is simply a big black hole in the fabric of life that was once him, for all of us. There is no getting it back, there is no fixing it, there are no answers for a life now gone.
As I sit here on the same balcony, where I received the news that he was gone, I can't help but think that he had lots of living left to accomplish, he is missing so many wonderful things in his girls lives, in his granddaughters lives, in my life, in my parents lives. 51 years is not nearly enough to finish this thing we call life. And now the lives of all of us are changed for forever, because he is not here to share it with us.
