My brother is six and a half years older then I am. Through the last few years he has become a sort of role model for me. My mother and father divorced when I was five. I grew up with my brother and three older sisters, the eldest T, then M , then C. Well about eight years ago M's three year old son died of cancer. Around that time my Mother and sister T were undergoing cancer treatment. When they were starting to recover and we started to pick up the pieces of the family, my father had a heart attack and went off his medication. Soon after my father started to stabilize, sister C died of a blood clot. C was the one that tried to make me the best person I could be, so I think it was around then that my brother took his stature of a role model.
So, yesterday when I attended my brother's bachelor party ('Slobberknocker '08!' was what he named it.) it was more then a ritual signify acceptance of his marriage. It was celebrating with my brother, for most people that is a common place thing. To me it is something that seemed like it would never happen. M's son died around Christmas and C made sure that it was still a special occasion, and she died 19 days before the next one. To just sit back and joke with my brother, it cuts back years of darkness and brings me to tears.
-NK
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2 comments:
I don't think you can do justice to this material in anything as dry and matter-of-fact as a journal entry. Or, rather, possibly it's the only way you can write about it, but as a piece of writing, you're giving the reader facts while withholding anything that would make the facts affecting.
So, maybe that's a longterm project or something to think about: to bring to this nearly-supreme topic some of the oblique and evocative approach you are playing with in other places.
The introduction of the past tragedies was only to show how much it meant to celebrate something with a family member. Tragedy is the common place in my life, it is what sets me apart and what gives me my passion to move forward.
But I do agree, it is material that is hard for me to sculpt and make a following piece. If I were to take each tragedy one at a time I could make a moving piece.
Here the goal was to explain why I was feeling the certain way I was. Without the history it would have been the last paragraph.
It also is very much a part of who I am and I think my feelings are well summed up in the line 'To just sit back and joke with my brother, it cuts back years of darkness and brings me to tears.'
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