Posted by
flagwaver on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 5:59:06 AM
I remember the phone call on that sunny Sunday afternoon, the phone call that led me to the worst moment of my life. The voice on the other end was my sister's telling me that my oldest brother had collapsed at church and was being taken to the hospital, and for me to stay calm and wait for her to call me back. For perhaps the first time in my life, I felt real fear and a deep sense of dread and panic set in on me. I started to hyperventilate, my mind was racing, and I swear I felt my blood run cold...because I knew. I knew that this was bad, and I was filled with dread that it was only going to get worse.
So I sat by the phone, waiting, hoping that my wife was right; hoping that the next time the phone rang that someone would be on the phone telling me that my brother would be okay, that it was just a minor situation. When I finally got the call, I was told to come to the hospital and my son and I immediately went to the car to set out for Greensboro, where my brother had been tranported for treatment. It was a stroke, they said, and we were lucky that the 9-1-1 call had been made so quickly, and that help had arrived in a timely manner. There was a chance that my brother would be alright, and when we reached the hospital and he saw my son and smiled at him, I had hope that it would be okay. I left there that evening not knowing what would happen, but praying that the signs would continue to be positive, and that my faith would be rewarded.
But that was not to be. Later that night my brother slipped into a coma that he never came out of. He was put on life support in hopes that he could regain the ability to breathe on his own, but that too turned out to be too much to ask. He lingered that way for days as the family gathered to hope and pray, but to eventually say our goodbyes to the most righteous man I ever knew. My sister in law and my older brother made the painful decision to let my brother go to his reward, and I have NO doubts about that, and along with our parents, they were with him as he passed on to the next life.
And to this day, I still cry for my brother. It is almost two years on since he left us, and I still cry. I cry for daughter who adored her father and still wants him to come home. I cry for a wife that lost her husband as they were just starting out their lives together. I cry for the son who never got to meet his dad, and will only know him through us. I cry for the plans unfulfilled, the dreams unrealized, and the life ended much too soon. I cry for my parents who had to experience the unimaginable pain of losing their eldest son; I cry for a brother and sister who lost their best friend; I cry for a younger brother and sister who lost a role model. And I cry for me. I cry for the time I wasted as a young man resenting his brother taking his place as "man of the house". I cry for the words not said often enough, for the feelings not made clear, and for the dreams WE shared that never came to pass.
They say that time heals all wounds, but that is a lie. Time does not heal wounds, it simply helps to blunt the pain. No matter how much time passes, my family will never recover, it will never be whole again, and our beloved brother will never be with us again. But time allows us to move on, to carry on with our lives, to strengthen our bonds with one another. No time does not heal, but it allows us to keep going on into the future.
And as time has passed, my wounds have started to heal...yet they are still here. I have been able to keep moving forward, to set and strive for goals, and to still be a relatively happy person. But even as time marches on on, I still have the ache, the feeling that things are just off kilter, and that something is missing from my happiness.
And still, I cry....