And then there were two.
He is gone. he died Tuesday around noon. I am glad he did not have to live anymore like he was the last time i saw him on Monday afternoon. It was awful. His eyes were rolling back in his head from the drugs, his mouth was hanging open and he was having trouble breathing.
I got the call from his oldest son that he had died. I sat for a minute, and then i cried. I cried hard enough so that my daughter came out of her room to see what was wrong, although she already knew.
So, the legend of Saint Jim has begun. His wife is saying that he was the best man ever, EVER. The only people who don't think that are his family of origin, whom he mostly ignored for the past 40 years. But if you think i am going to disagree with his wife/my sister-in-law to her face, you are crazy.
There are 3 people left on this planet who have known me all my life, and only one of them who knows what it was like to grow up in that family.
And my dad is 87, and my mom is 84. This might be a rough year.
Seriously, thank you for your comments. I read them all, more than once, and i love you. You are so wise.
What will happen next?
Saint Jim will not be lonely. I know others who have achieved the status of belovedness through death. For all I know, I could one day be among their ranks.
ReplyDeleteWishing you and your family strength and peace in the coming months.
I'm sorry. Take care.
ReplyDeleteWhen my sister died, I tried to shine her memory up a bit for her daughter's benefit, because she was only twelve. I thought it was wrong to speak ill of the dead, or whatever they say. But then one of my friends gave me some of the best advice I have ever gotten about dealing with death. He said that to pretend my sister was a perfect, angelic person was to screw her out of her humanity. He told me that when I spoke of her with her daughter to be honest, to let her daughter remember the fucked up things she did, to let her daughter be validated in knowing that her mother truly was a mess. And then to balance that with memories of the things she did right, the moments when she truly was wonderful, the funny things we loved about her, and so forth. I took that to heart, and it helped very much, because my sister was a pretty awful person at times. She was neglectful of her daughter, abusive to her family, and selfish beyond measure. To deny these truths is to deny her life. To accept them is to accept her life, and also her death. It doesn't change the fact that I loved her, that her daughter loved her, my parents loved her. We have some happy memories that we treasure, and we have some sad and hurtful memories that we also recognize have imprinted themselves on us forever and changed who we are. Hopefully for the better.
ReplyDeleteObviously your brother was a real human with depth and personality, and having been there, I encourage you to embrace him in your memories as a whole person with all his faults as well as his gifts, and let yourself mourn all of it, all of it, all of it. Although this is painful, it is honest and it heals better than falseness. And remember that healing hurts sometimes. It's part of the process, not a linear process either, lots of forward and back. Sending you love and warmth and healing thoughts.
I did this when my grandmother died. In life I practically worshipped her because she was one of the few female relatives I looked up to and could count on. When she died she became perfect. It took me several months to remember that she was human, with her political conspiracy theories and her snappishness at times, all of which had made me love her even more in life. Grief is such an incredible process of pain and sometimes at the end the glimmer of something profoundly true and beautiful will materialize, if we can recognize it.
ReplyDeleteI wish you the time and space you need to move through that process.
I cannot believe that you all care enough to comment so beautifully on my post. I I feel love for you all. No i am not drunk. Thank you, so much.
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