My Brother passed away last night. His name was James Dean and he was 14 months younger than me.
His health had been very poor for a long time so it wasn’t unexpected, but I still thought I had one more day and so I waited to make the 3 hour trip to go say goodbye.
So now it’s after midnight and I’m baking the zucchini bread that his girls love and getting that made is part of the reason I delayed my trip and I feel very bereft.
RIP Dean. I’m so sorry your life had such a rotten last few years and I’m grateful that you are no longer suffering and I’m so upset with myself for not coming in time to say goodbye.
And no matter how you handled the last hours, you’ll always know you might have done more / different / better than you did. That’s human nature. The fact that feeling is inevitable doesn’t make it correct. The cumulative weeks, months, and years before the final hours matter far more than does the bitter end.
We’re all here for you. May his memory live in you with the good times to the fore.
My sincere condolences. It’s a hard road that doesn’t get much easier. You’ll always grieve the losses, but it’s more than likely that there was never much you could have done to prevent it. I speak from experience, having lost my brother, sister, a cousin, and worst of all, my 42-year-old son in the past five years. You do what you can, but in the end it just seems inevitable.
I am sorry for your loss, may his memory be a blessing.
I lost my brother, and I still will run across a meme or a joke online and want to email it to him. [I will confess, I have a friend who passed Jan 2020 from a heart attack, and I actually still mail his account stuff, and will until it fills up or gets deleted.]
Quoting for truth. We will always have regrets, the missed moments, the “If I only…”. But remember your time as family as a whole, possible blemishes and all and try (when possible) to not let single moments overshadow the rest.
May you and all others have the most happy moments going forward and in your memories, and may the pains fade into forgetfulness.
3 grand parents (the other 1 died before I was born), 3 parents / parents in law (the other 1 died before I married into the family), 1 wife, several co-workers, classmates, & friends.
Been averaging over 1/yr of late and that’ll probably continue awhile. A man could be forgiven for thinking this living business is dangerous.
