I’m sorry I made you cry.

His was a sad story, as I guess only one named “Roland” could have.

Don’t thank me for sharing—I’m only able to be 100% me, here or anywhere. Thank you for finding it touching, I suppose :)

As a teenager, I couldn’t fathom it, but now, I guess I know, we all come to our respective ends. What’s tragic isn’t that life comes to an end, but that we failed to live our lives completely, and didn’t open our hearts to those around us.

That would be a tragic thing indeed.

Thanks for your comment :)
You’re the best!
Lisa

He was.
He was my hero.
Super-Bro
:D

:)

Y’are!

_Muah!
thanks Matty.

I dunno what to say :)
thanks for the kind words

Thanks :)

Yes, I do the same thing: he never got to__.

He did cram a lot of life into 30 years, though (more than I have, maybe, at 40)

I sometimes wonder where those 20 years he’s been missing would have taken him.

The truth is, I guess it makes you face your own mortality. One comes to the realization that death is not the aberration, it’s the norm. We are so afraid of it, in this culture…we don’t talk about it, we shy away from it, and when someone dies we avoid the subject rather than talk about it.

That made me mad, afterward.

How I feel about it? I’ve made my peace with it. I’m dying, too. We all are. But, I feel blessed that he was there for 18 years of my life, guiding me, teaching me, tormenting me, making me a better person, on the whole.

I am very sorry for your loss, Cal. He was a handsome fellow. They say that the loss of a child is the deepest wound one can feel. It’s not supposed to happen that we outlive our children. I hope you’ve found as much peace as you can, and I thank you very much for your comment :)

The funny thing, one of the best things about 43, is when someone comments on a post, you get to re-read what you wrote.

It did me good to re-read what I had written about my brother, and though I didn’t think it was very articulate at the time, today, I don’t think I could do him justice with words. Thank you for the comment and the opportunity to re-read my post :)

As far as my neice and nephew (the one that was 2 months old when Roland died) I hardly see them.

My neice fell in with the wrong crowd. She’s now a 25 year old with a drug history, and has some emotional issues. I offered to let her live with me, free of rent, all she had to do was quit smoking cigarettes (I’m a nurse and an anti-cigarette fanatic) and go to college. It lasted a month, and she couldn’t live without her dirt-bag friends (many of them were nice, but the ones she seemed to fall for were ex-jail types, with tattooed faces, etc.)

My nephew, I hear, is in the Air Force now, but I have long stopped hearing from their mother or them, since the rift between me and my father keeps me from associating with that side of the family.

Life is funny, sometimes. It’s like surgery…in order to save tissue, you have to cut—it was like that with my father. In order to get him out of my life after my mom’s death, I had to cut the inlaw out, and sadly, her kids (who really have a different relationship with their grandfather, as he’s now mellower)

As it should be. They need each other, and I don’t want to have him in my life—it’s all good.

Thanks so much for the comment :)