BS: Missing Loved Ones

Subject: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Aug 13 - 07:11 PM

Tomorrow, August 16, my brother would have become 76 years old. But he's been gone almost 14 years, dead of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and opportunistic bladder cancer.   The part that amazes me is how much and for how long a person is dearly missed.

This brother was a bright, opinionated man, a musician to the soul, an auto mechanic and a roofer on the job- when he got tired of the one he would turn to the other – an articulate, clear-headed person who, although he loved to debate, never attacked the opponent, only the opinion.

After I left Oregon for Alaska we had long, lively conversations by telephone on every subject conceivable. We started with – and often continued with – our family and our upbringing as Amish kids. We agreed that forgiveness was possible only as understanding progressed- I am happy to say that we both got there.

Politically he was much more conservative than I and we both strove mightily to convince the other of faulty thinking, but always in good humor. Many a conversation ended with a laugh and the admission that we would never come to full agreement. On the other hand, both of us from time to time modified a position when a truth suddenly became overwhelmingly evident. Arguing with my brother – we were the two youngest of a large family - has given me hope and the knowledge that people do change, can become more aware, more sensitive, more insightful.

This brother and I learned many things at the same time. I went to school a year before him and I taught him to read. So much so that when he got to school the next year he was embarrassed to discover that he already knew how, and he tried to hide it.

We learned to play harmonica together (literally 'harmonica'- we had only one harmonica. In the winter evenings we would close the door between our large kitchen and equally large living room; he would sit on the open oven door as the wood stove slowly cooled, I would sit on a chair squarely set in front of him and we traded the harmonica back and forth as we showed each other a new tune or a riff on an old one) and Tonette (a small recorder), and much later guitar (again, only one. He learned chords before I did and I learned to flat pick before he did. I remember one time when I came into the room and he said Hey, "Ebbie", what's this? What's this?" and picked a tune and when he finished I said evilly: Your guess is as good as mine); we learned to ride bikes at the same time- we were both too short and small to ride the family's big, heavy bikes, so we stuck our right legs under the bars to reach the pedal on the other side and we rode lopsided like that until in due time we grew taller. Before that though, we coasted down our long driveway to the highway by tipping a bike far to the right and balancing on one pedal. I remember my father shaking his head in disbelief.

My father was a horse trainer so we always had horses to ride, even though one might come home from school and discover one's favorite riding horse had been traded off. He and I and the brother just older than I rode for miles and hours on our farm and the woods on it and the sheep ranch behind ours that we had permission to use, just so we kept the gates closed, and as we went we sang every song we could think of.

I miss Elmer.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: gnu
Date: 15 Aug 13 - 07:25 PM

Ebbie... thank you.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 15 Aug 13 - 09:51 PM

Yes, you do miss your brother, and I suppose you always will. Thank you for sharing such wonderful memories of him.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 13 - 10:54 PM

You got full value from the years you had....such wonderful memories.

I envy you, as my brother & I would likely never have become acquainted if we hadn't been brought up in the same house. (He's still around..on the other coast. We spoke on the phone the other night. We correspond more now than when we were young.)

I am thinking on the list of loved ones I have lost that I can write about so endearingly.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: ranger1
Date: 16 Aug 13 - 01:46 AM

I miss my dad. He's been gone over five years now, the hurt has eased, but not the missing him. I miss bad puns and Looney Tunes cartoons, in-jokes about frozen turkeys, early Sunday morning phone conversations, getting up at 4 AM to have coffee with him before he went to work. I miss riding dirt roads listening to Johnny Cash and Jim Reeves, and I miss being told I'll always be daddy's baby no matter how old I get.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Aug 13 - 02:07 AM

That's the ticket, Tami! I would love to hear stories about those we've lost.

Maybe because of Kat... lately I've been feeling just plain sad.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Megan L
Date: 16 Aug 13 - 02:52 AM

This poem was written by my dad for his mother's funeral. I asked my brother and sister to use it at his and then my mums parting.

THE FRAGRANT MEMORY

'Twas only a lovely memory
That's followed me down through the years
It's been both a friend and companion
So near me when trouble appears
It softens my judgement of others
It mellows the thoughts in my mind
'Twas only a fragrant memory
Yet a treasure in life I find

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Aug 13 - 10:56 AM

I miss my mom. It was a complicated relationship but like all relationships it was still evolving.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: frogprince
Date: 17 Aug 13 - 08:24 AM

I had been meaning to call my sister, who lives a couple of states to the west. After I read this thread, I picked up the phone. Thank you, Ebbie.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Aug 13 - 12:32 PM

Last night's music helped. I had sent out an email inviting friends to come make music and, unexpectedly, a couple of people came who knew my brother from the three visits he had made to Alaska.

I had brought my brother's old mandolin to the party and this friend picked it up and played it most of the evening. She said she would sing the songs the mandolin knew from the years it had spent with my brother. And so she did.

She had no idea it was his birthday.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Aug 13 - 03:14 PM

August 16th is also my dad's birthday - he would have been 88, which is old enough that he might not have still been alive if he'd lived, if that makes sense. His parents lived well into their 90's, though, so he probably would still have been around.
He was having lunch when a carbomber drove into the Beirut embassy's lunchroom wall on April 18th, 1983. He must have died without knowing he'd been hit, let alone what hit him. He was 57.
I try to spend his birthday remembering how great he was, and his deathday mourning how awful his loss still is.
Great thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 18 Aug 13 - 02:33 PM

touched by your post, ebbie, and enjoyed reading some of your background .and the subsequent accounts and comments.
I lost my brother about 14 yr ago which took some time to get over ,especially as it was the result of a suicide attempt.
mum died last year after a battle with cancer, but she was 84 so is more understandable, though still hard.
blessings on all missing others    pete.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 18 Aug 13 - 03:01 PM

Thank you Ebbie for sharing your memories of your brother. I lost my father in January of 2011. He was great dad and a master storyteller. He'd give so much detailed description that you could just about see it in your mind's eye. Pretty much like you.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Janie
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 10:59 PM

Thanks for starting this thread, Ebbie.

Won't share stories of my Dad here. Did that on another, precious thread during his year-long bout with cancer at the end of long and consciously lived life.

Grateful to this community for that, and missing Daddy on his birthday.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 01:58 AM

I remember that one, Janie, and how we breathed with you and your family. It is fairly amazing how we humans survive pain when we think we barely can. I keep having to remind myself that death is a normal, even essential, part of life.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: G-Force
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 06:07 AM

And the missing never really goes away.

I lost my brother in 1971, at age 21, by which time he was already a far better guitarist than I was then (at 23) or have ever been since. But then he used to practice for hours a day sometimes, inspired by the likes of Wizz Jones and Mike Chapman. He had also started to write a few amazing songs, inspired particularly by Pete Atkin and Clive James, but gradually finding his own voice.

The sad thing is, there is practically no one around now who remembers him. But I do, the laughter, the sound of his voice, everything.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Midchuck
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 09:40 AM

Just in case someone has never heard this...

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 11:47 AM

"The sad thing is, there is practically no one around now who remembers him. " G-Force

That ties in with another aspect of loss that breaks my heart: the bitter knowledge that we leave them all far behind, and farther behind with each day.



Good grief! (no pun intended) I am sounding as though I have not come to terms with the various losses- and of course, I have. One could not function otherwise. I think that 'coping' in actuality means that we must assimilate loss, make it an actual part of ourselves, before we can continue. After we are 'whole' again, we can go on.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: ranger1
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 01:36 PM

Just because we cope and come to terms with the losses doesn't mean we miss them any less. My first roommate in college died in a freak accident less than two weeks after our sophomore year. I still miss her 23 years later, and wonder what she would have accomplished if she'd made it beyond the 20 short years she was alive.

When Laura arrived at college, she got stuck in the party dorm with a nice roommate, but not one she really wanted to live with. I liked my roommate fine, but she wanted to live in the party dorm. I wasn't really sure I wanted to take on this shy, homesick girl, but I knew how it felt to be so homesick you thought you were going to die, and agreed to the roommate swap. So glad I did. Once Laura got over her homesickness, she blossomed. She was the dorm practical joker, was game for any adventure that came up, and had a hidden talent as a skateboarder. She also slept with a knife under her pillow, never got the whole story on that one. We swapped cheesy romance novels and Louis L'Amour westerns, talked about cute boys we had crushes on late at night, and shared family traumas that we'd never told anyone else up to that point. I remember how excited she was to drive her beloved car, a bright yellow VW Bug back to campus the fall of our sophomore year and how made she got at the guy down the hall when he mummified it in toilet paper as revenge for one of her practical jokes. Greg was frequently the victim, mostly because he was an easy mark. I think that might have been the only time he ever came out on top of the practical joke wars.

I'll never forget the phone call from our friend Lenore, letting us all know she'd slipped on the rocks at the top of Ripogenus Gorge and fallen to her death 200 feet into the river below. I still take a few moments on her birthday, March 27th (six days after mine), to remember her.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 04:16 PM

My God. What a shock, Tami. I had a friend who at age 29 fell off a mountain and died- I think that kind of loss is worse than one from disease.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 04:55 PM

I really appreciate the sharing. I miss my son, Lionel, who died April 23, 2011.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: SINSULL
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 06:58 PM

A friend confided her terrible secret to me recently. With guilt and shame she told me how she had allowed her brother to go off on his own (supposedly to live with a sibling who in fact was less capable than the challenged man). He was found wandering in a large city and institutionalized for a while. To preserve her own sanity, she let him go and now has no idea where he is or even if he is alive. This sibling was a nightmare from childhood through the years until his mother died. She, the functioning sister, took over. It cost her her marriage, her lifestyle, and her sanity.
The story came out of the blue and reduced her to tears. She seemed to expect me to tell her to go find her brother. Instead I told her of walking away from my son and his addiction and saving my own life and sanity.
She wasn't even sure why she confided in me. We wept together and honored the decision to take care of ourselves which is the only decision if you are to care for someone else.
Death can be a blessing when living is hell.
SINS

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Janie
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 07:54 PM

Larry   {{{{{{{{{{{{hug}}}}}}}}}}}}}. The loss of any loved one is hard, but the loss of a child....no matter how old the child, is one that is particularly hard to become reconciled. It simply isn't supposed to happen, even though it does.

Just because we cope and come to terms with the losses doesn't mean we miss them any less. Well said, Tami.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Aug 13 - 10:05 PM

Larry, do you want to tell us about your son? No pressure- but if you want to, we are here.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 02:55 AM

Thanks Ebbie and Janie. I'll have to think about whether I want to share any more on a public forum. But I would like to encourage anybody who has lost a child to check out "Compassionate Friends" groups. They were a lifesaver for my partner and I.

I do want to say to SINSULL and his/her friend that the loss you have experienced is no doubt as intense as ours. I often think that as devastating our loss is, to have had him disappear without ever having any idea what happened would have been unbearable.

I commend you for your courage in caring for somebody else by taking care of yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: Missing Loved Ones
From: Megan L
Date: 21 Aug 13 - 03:53 AM

On the 12th of August My big brother a friend and I went to a local hotel to celebrate my 30th anniversary. The owner of the hotel knows me well and set a 4th place at the table for my Dauvit a place he will never sit at again but till the day I join him he will be my husband and as long as we are able to have the meal he will be honoured.