Among Friends

[shoekitty]

@monicakm To me each of our days, hours, mins are numbered like a grain of sand.   Each one is important, and holds a memory.  When someone we love passes on, they leave their worldly life etched over our hearts   As long as our heart beat we remember those moments...and then take them on, and leave more memories to those we leave . On it goes ....circle of life. Sorry, you feeling the pain of his loss, it hurts......but so lucky he lived, and you remembered so wonderfully his life!

[monicakm]

Thank you so much ladies.  To those of you who see the personality in him, you are so right.  He was larger than life but humble enough to give you the shirt off his back. He was well liked by everyone who ever met him.  He was charming and magnanimous.  As his big sister, I had complete control over his every move for the first few years of our lives.  We lacked one week being a year apart.  I remember once leading him by the hand to the opened kitchen door.  In my hand was a water hose.  I handed it to him and told him to spray it into the kitchen.  He did.  Mom was in the street talking to some other Army wives.  We lived at Ft Knox at the time.  Then there was the time I knocked a slice of tomato out of his hand right before he put it in his mouth.  I convinced him that tomatoes were horrible, nasty!  He didn't eat another one till he was a grown man   We used to play cowboys and indians while riding our horses.  We would pretend to shoot each other and then fall off our horses while they were in a gallop.  Probably why I can't walk today   When he was older and doing things he shouldn't, he snuck off to the airport and took off in dad's plane.  He terrorized the community with death defying manuvers.  Yes, he knew how to fly.  We both took flying lessons. Not to be mean but he had more lives than a cat.  He and my husband were best friends before DH and I started dating.  My brother wasn't happy about the turn of events and the night of our wedding, he warned DH, "don't do it man!  Trust me, you'll be sorry"   

But it wasn't all good.  He got into the alcohol and drug scene really bad.  The times he was in jail, I would visit him on Sundays.  It was so emotional.  I would leave the jail and have to sit in my car for about 30 minutes, crying, before I could drive home.  It was horrible for my parents.  Dad didn't show it but mom did and I spent a lot of time mad at my brother for what he was doing to our parents.  

But God wasn't done with him.  He turned his life over to God and became a new man.  He spent the rest of his life spending all the time he could with our parents and caring for them and their property for about the last 10-15 years of his life.  He moved in with them when they needed a full-time caregiver.  

His wild life is what ultimately killed him.  About a month before he died, he was diagnosed with brain, liver and kidney cancers with one week to live.  My aunt and I were with him when he got the news.  He never bobbled.  The Dr was a Christian  and knew from talking with my brother that he was too.  It was a low key celebration in that office.  I was too shocked and frightened to be celebrating at the time and I knew I was the one who had to go home and tell my parents.  Mom was never the same.  She struggled to even be on auto-pilot.  Dad had already been diagnosed with dementia.  Mom hadn't been diagnosed but I'm sure she was in the beginning stages.  

I know his story is like so many others.  And like so many others, they are someone's son, brother, husband, father, uncle, cousin.  Their actions spread much further than they ever consider and hurt more people than they think.  I'm so grateful I had a meaningful last few hours with him.

He didn't have a lot but what he did have he left to my husband and me.  We distributed most of it to various family members.  He collected guns and knives. 

It's just dad and me now.