Siblings

Uncle Bob would have been 73 today.

Funnily enough, I discovered coincidentally today is also National Sibling Day.

My uncle left behind a sister and a brother. I haven't experienced it, but the loss of a sibling must be a different sort of grief. My uncle was not just my uncle, he was someone's brother.

I'm never sure what the design is or why it sometimes happens, but last night, before I discovered that we even had a National Sibling Day, I was thinking of my siblings and feeling the miles that stretch between us both literally and sometimes figuratively.

Thinking in an abstract way of what their loss would mean to me. I don't mean this in a macabre way, but the loss of a close family member sometimes draws everything together in a finite, more urgent sense of meaning. You just begin to think differently.

Last night I sat wordlessly looking at a photo of my sister and her new-born son. The memories crowded in, flashbacks of her. Erin. Fearless, tomboy, scarily coordinated in a way I could never dream of being. Oozing self-confidence and a pragmatism that has never ceased to amaze me. We couldn't be more different. To think of Erin is to see a flash of pink and purple, perpetually in motion, as if life were a race that you feared lagging behind. The scabs on your arms and knees, the broken arm when you were 7, and the gap-toothed urchin grin (before your braces) your ribbons at the finish line. When I think of you, it is us racing to get our roller skates on so we could be sure of being on the floor when 'Mr. Roboto' was played, it is you deliberately licking all of the tomato sauce off your Spaghettio Meatballs so you wouldn't have to share, it's the time when I was tired of your trantrums so I shoved you into an elevator in the County Courthouse downtown and listened to you screaming up 12 floors, it's me driving like a mad woman hell for leather to your bedside when you were in labor with my niece and you telling me before I could say a word, 'don't worry, I've got drugs I can't feel a thing' because you knew I'd be worrying, it's the two of us weeping together at Grandpa's grave, and it's the photo of you and I when we were little where I've got my arm around you protectively because back then you'd let me.

This one's for you Erin...


It's for my brother, David. We've had our differences and while we aren't miles apart literally, figuratively our lives could not be more different. Still, when I think of you, I see a grey Subaru sportscar and I can still smell the mingled odors of cologne, mexican food, and stale cigarette smoke, you in your Chi-Chi's uniform and me in my Chick-Fil-A visor, barrelling down the road to our jobs with the radio all the way up, U2's 'Achtung Baby' vibrating the windows. It's when you lied and told me the Beverly Cleary book I'd unearthed by your bed was a library book and I wasn't allowed to read it. I yelled at you telling you how mean you were, only one week later to find that book wrapped in a package on the dining room table for my birthday. On another birthday, you used your Albertson's courtesy clerk salary to buy me the Julian Lennon cassette that I still have (it's the only one I kept), sitting up late at midnight watching MTV with you when I was supposed to be in bed and you didn't rat me out, the time when I had a panic attack on the way to the airport at nearly 11 p.m. and you left your home and comfortable bed and followed me all the way there and back in your car so I wouldn't be alone.

This one's for you David...


It's for my brother Doug. You were always so much older than me and as such, a mystery. We've been miles apart in geography and years. To think of you, is to think of the Summer of 1982, where you taught me the song 'You get a line and I'll get a pole honey', it's you insisting that hot water made ice cubes freeze faster, watching you in your white jeans and red polo shirt helping kids at the Little 500 Go-Cart Track-your first summer job... you were so cool, unflappable. I used to like to try and see if I could make you mad, because it seemed inconceivable that anybody could be that low-key, that slow to anger. I remember you liked Ataris, soccer and model airplanes. But some of the best memories I have are of you as an adult seeing the way you treat your wife, how in love you still are even after these 20 years, it gives me renewed faith in relationships. To see how you've become such a devout man of God, how strongly you hold your beliefs, but mostly it's your enigmatic character and economy of speech that are the things I think most of when I look back.

This one's for you Doug...


And for Laura. You were kind of a bonus, a treat, because we didn't meet and become sisters until you were 6. To think of you then, is actually to see your daughter now. She's your mini-me.  Like her, you were always so shy and petite. I remember being much amused when we first met because you'd named your gerbil, Jill. Actually, I probably had more fun with you than any of the others because I was so much older (and had a car). My best memories of you are when you made me face my fears of roller coasters at Disney, dared me and we went on all of them but one in a day, eating churros in Epcot with a maraiachi band in the distance that wouldn't go away, you dragging me to all the Pauly Shore movies, us laughing at our rented copy of Dumb and Dumber until we literally fell off the bed! Picking you up from school on every other Friday stopping and ruining our dinner by having a snack at McDonalds on the way home, Saturday nights at Fun World, etc. Mostly though when I see you, the word grace is what immediately comes to mind, it's in everything you do, the way you raise your kids, the kindness that you exhibit to everyone you meet, the effortless way you seem to deflect life's slings and arrows. I'm so glad that God brought you into my life.

This one's for you Laura...

It's sad that so often we wait until funerals to tell people what we think of them, it isn't until death parts us that we realize how dear our brothers and sisters' and our memories of them really are.

So I thought I'd tell you today...that I think of you, that I cherish the memories, how thankful I am that you're part of my life.