My Brother's Girlfriend Died Yesterday

Annabellethecat66 — Sun, 12 May 2013 15:56:00 GMT

I spoke with my brother (he's 73, but looks and acts like he's 50) today. It was a sad conversation. He told me what my little sister had already told me.

His girlfriend (she's around 58, and a widow, just like him) died while driving him.

A little background. My brother was married for 50 years to his beloved. She died a few years ago after a long illiness. His girlfriend had been married since she was a teenager. She nursed her late husband (he had cancer) for several years.

They met on a widow/widowers website. You might think their love slowly grew, but that wasn't the case. I remember that suddenly he and I were having long telephone conversations about kissing and hugging in the park, holding hands, being inseparable. They were given another chance to find love and they both jumped in with both feet! It's as if they knew their time together was limited and they needed to hurry.

My brother knows how lucky he was in finding her only after a few months after his wife had died. He and I are very close (as is all of my family). He loved to share how funny he thought it was when he'd run up behind her, spin her around and plant a big kiss on her.

The details. They were driving down the road (on a highway) she was driving (as she usually did). She started drifting across the road to the opposite lane. He called out to her! She pulled back to her lane. When she did it again, he grabbed the wheel, passed over the lanes to the shoulder of the road and threw the car in park to stop it. She still had her foot and hands on the wheel. He dialed 911 and did CPR.

He said she was dead before he got her out of the car. Just like that, she was gone from him!

We are a family that, on first observation, you wouldn't notice how we feel about life and death. We believe very strongly that there is a reason everything happens in life. We just don't always know what we are supposed to learn. We'd rather celebrate the person's life than to dwell on their death.

So, as I sit here writing this I am waiting to hear about the details of her wake. I am remembering what my brother said when my husband died just as suddenly. He said, "You must remember all of your good times together. Don't dwell on your anger that he left so suddenly". He is doing that today. He's doing that even as it has now been 2 times that the love of his life has been taken away from him.

The human spirit is amazing. I told my little sister (the one suffereing fom depression I mentioned here) that I was given a gift and my brother was given a gift. We were both able to be with the people we loved as they left life here. We were able to know they didn't suffer. They didn't call out to us. We were able to breathe our breath into their lungs. We won't dwell on the fact that it didn't start them breathing. We'll remember that our lips touched their lips.

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My Brother's Girlfriend Died Yesterday