Mainly that just sounds like I'm a huge fan of Guy Fawkes Day or V for Vendetta. Neither is true. I like them, sure, but that's not the point. This is a weird day for my family. When I realized today was the 5th, I audibly said, "Oh... it's the fifth..." It is the birthdate of my brother. My deceased ten years brother. Also, my brother who wasn't my brother. It's a complicated tale really. But to sum it all up. My parents were a couple going on five years. My mothers older sister had a baby, and my teenage/early twenties parents fell head over heels, madly in love with him. Proof or it didn't happen? Here. These are just a few from one album, from my brothers baby time. The center photo shows my aunt and her husband; my brothers' parents, but it's my mom holding him. All the others are my mom or dad spending time with who they felt was their son. Looking at the photo's you can see that he was, for all intents and purposes, their first born. They loved him to the moon and back. I'm even certain that they loved him more than their own biological daughters. I'm honestly OK with that.
It also comes as no shock to me that on the day we learned of his death my mother lamented and wailed all over the house that her son was dead. Or that on the day of the funeral our dad openly wept, his body shook, and he had to push himself into a tree just to remain standing. Something which he didn't do during his own mother or father's funerals; both of whom he loved terribly. But they do say that the worst thing in the world is to lose a child. Not a parent or a friend, but a child; your child. He even came to live with us during his late teen years and for weird reasons we had to do some sort of adoption so that he could remain with us. So in some sort of technicality round-about way, he really did end up becoming my parents' son. He considered us his family; them his parents in a way, and us as his sisters. Of course we thought of him as out brother, my sister and I. There's really not a day that goes by that the four of us don't miss him fiercely. His death date will be the 26th of this month, which makes December all that much weirder for us. That and the knowledge of us being the last people to speak to him. We called him on the phone on our way to my paternal grandmothers house. He was slipping into the diabetic coma that killed him, only none of us could even fathom that at the time. We were just happy to be talking to him and wondered why he was so sleepy. Hind-sight is 20/20 and also a bitch. Apparently it was his time and we weren't supposed to realize for whatever reasons, but none of that even occurs to you when you do finally realize something. All the woulda, coulda, shoulda's ran rampant through our brains. "We KNEW he had diabetes, we knew all about the disease. Why didn't we realize something was amiss? Why did't we shout at him? Why didn't we scream? Why didn't we tell him to take his insulin? Why didn't we call the paramedics for him? Why didn't we do anything and everything we could in that moment?" Something, anything, any sort of last ditch attempt to stop Death in the middle of his work. But we didn't. We just all had the idea at the same time to call him. This great need to talk to him. We were happy about it. We were going to call Rusty while driving down the highway. No one hesitated, we were all on board with the idea and someone flipped open a mobile and punched in his number. It was probably too late to do anything to save him. Perhaps him or something else in the Universe needed us all to say goodbye. "Call Rusty." was all we "heard" in our brains. So we did. By mid January, my sister and I thought about calling him, yet recoiled from the idea as soon as the suggestion came out of our mouths. None of us had ever recoiled from the thought of calling him. Ever. The next morning is when we got the news that he was dead, and the coroner said he'd been dead since the last week of December, though he couldn't pin-point it. But we could. Which in grief made it all that much worse thinking how we hadn't done anything while on the phone with him and he hadn't been "missed" for 2 - 3 weeks. And it was all our fault. It wasn't, but the guilt was strong. How could we have done that to him? Sometimes these thoughts still creep in, but death is what it is, and there's no going back for do-over's. I'm sure no one would blame us and we had to realize that we couldn't continue to blame ourselves; it's what you do to move on. So, here's to you on the day of your birth, man. Although I know that where ever he is he's shaking his head and thinking I'm weird. And it's a comforting thought, because it means that he is still himself.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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