3 years (And I'm still bummed)

Unfortunately, today marks the 3rd anniversary of my brother Ray’s untimely passing.

I’m good. I’m good with it. I’m about as good as I’m ever going to get with it.

I talked to his widow but a few minutes ago, she’s in good spirits, and she was all prepared to watch Mason--Ray’s son--engage in his fourth ever Little League game. Still more proof that life does indeed go on.

I really have to say, though, that this one stings. Or, it continues to sting.

I lost one of my two parents--my grandmother--when I was barely 21. And I was shocked…absolutely shocked by that loss. It never occurred to me that my world could change practically overnight.

3 years later, the only father figure I ever had--my grandfather--went off to wherever it is that people go to when they drop out of this here existence we have going on.

And 4 years later, the only true parent I ever had--my lovely mom--succumbed to the cancer that she had kept so well hidden from us all. So, at 29, much to my surprise, I was without parents as well as without grandparents.

And at that time, I thought that was about as bad as it would ever get. And for almost two years, I was well off my rocker. In retrospect, I don’t how I wasn’t divorced, arrested, killed, or all of the above during that frightfully deranged period.

But through it all, I had to feign strength and confidence, not only for my immediate family, but for my deeply-wounded brother as well. In all honesty, when Mom passed, when I told him that she was no more, his pronounced reaction suggested to me that he would self-destruct sooner rather than later.

As it turned out, unlike me, he was completely lost without the only parent he had ever known, had ever grown to love. Without Mom, he spent the rest of his shortened life looking backwards rather than forward. He just couldn't blow it off like I could.

Throughout the entirety of my mostly misspent life, I had no better and no more loyal friend than Ray. Truth be told, we were step-brothers. But never once, not even once, did that step-brother thing pass through either of our lips.

He was a kid abandoned by his father, as was I many years before he was born. And I think that abandonment issue indelibly bonded the two of us together forever, despite his being 12 years my junior.

If you wanted to fight with me, that meant you had to prepare for the major load he was going to bring to the temporary scuffle. And if you wanted to trade punches and the likes with him, you also had to deal with the likes of me fighting dirty alongside him.

We had different, long-gone fathers, a caring, shell-shocked and oft-screwed over mother doing the level best she knew how to, but we were never, not even for a fleeting instant, step-brothers.
Me and Ray, we were brothers.

And in his memory, I quote Tom Chapin…

“If you were a giant, you could be a New York Giant, which would be a very powerful giant indeed.”


Later