Soldier rest! thy warfare o'er...

-





Soldier rest! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep thast knows not breaking, Dream of battled fields no more, Days of danger, nights of waking.

Sir Walter Scott




My only brother, my only sibling, died a year ago. He was no longer in the military, had been discharged years ago, but had his own battles to fight for many, many years. It just happened to be Memorial Day weekend when he fell through the cracks of the VA Medical System. No offense to any ER nurses or docs. It was one of those bad alignment of the stars when everything that can go wrong, goes wrong.

His ashes are scattered along the Tidal Pools off Highway 1 near Half Moon Bay among the sea stars, the red albalone, the anenomes, the harbor seals... I do believe he is peaceful there. It's a rugged, beautiful, plentiful piece of the earth. I can see why he liked to go there to talk to God. God feels present along that rocky coastline with a vigorous and masculine force, yet the intertidal landscape itself is very fragile. Each retreat of the tides creating ocean worlds in miniature. Survival literally depending on the ablility to cling to life.


I'd like to tell him again how sorry I am that I was working that weekend and the holiday. I'm sorry I didn't pay more attention when my mother told me he'd been to the ER for pancreatitis. He'd been sent back home. I thought he was okay. I thought this was something that could wait until my stretch of work was over. My husband and I still cleaning out his mother's home after her recent death. Everything had to be out by the end of the month. We had just walked through the door after sending off the last of the boxes and bags of clothes to St. Vincent de Paul's when we got the call that my brother had been found dead in his apartment.


"If I could have used my hands to pick you up and make you stand
Would you still have fallen"--Holly Williams


I'm sorry I'm too late. Rest in peace, Tommy.
Requiscat in Pace

Comments

  1. SanMay 25, 2008 at 8:59 PM

    Lovely tribute to your Tommy. I believe we all have regrets about times that we didn't act with enough urgency in the face of something that would change our lives, but I like to believe there's a deeper wisdom that connects us, that understands and forgives. We have to forgive ourselves.

    The image you've chosen to accompany your words is exquisitely appropriate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 26, 2008 at 1:12 PM

    We all do the best we can, and you did your best, I am sure he knows that. Big hugs today.

    ReplyDelete
  3. VeronicaMay 29, 2008 at 4:19 AM

    It is our fondest hope (and our deepest nightmare), believing that if we'd been there at a certain moment in time, things would have ended differently.

    Life, fate, faith, the people we love--all so complicated.

    Peace on the journey...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

Popular posts from this blog

10 Things I Love That Start With the Letter E

-
Image
Game imported from Sweet Annie at Blissful Bohemian . Name ten things you love that begin with a specific letter. In my case, the letter E. So here goes: 1. Well, first of all there's elephants . Who doesn't love those cute little faces?? And what's not to love? Elephants are actually a lot like humans. They laugh and cry. They grieve over their dead. They play games with each other and have fantastic memories so they can even remember the rules and not go to bed mad. 2. Then there's Engelbert Humperdinck, who I don't actually love and his singing's just on this side of okay, but I do love his name. 3. I luuuuuuv eggs , deviled. Nothing fancy, just classic. Best Basic Deviled Eggs 6 eggs, hard cooked and peeled 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 teaspoon yellow mustard 3/4 teaspoon white wine vinegar pinch of salt (optional) fresh ground black pepper (optional) smoked paprika (optional) Cut eggs in half. Arrange egg whites cut side up on a serving plate and put the yolks
Read more

The Poet Goes to Indiana by Mary Oliver

-
Image
I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o
Read more

A Year with EB White

-
Image
"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."----- from Charlotte's Web I am a soul always drawn and fascinated by the idea of " A Year of...". A Year of Rumi. A Year of Calvin and Hobbes. A year cooking with Julia Child. A project that provides guidance for the year and a ruler we can measure inward growth in the course of our circle around the sun. One year, after an early marriage and an unsurprising--except to me--early divorce, I came across a book by Sue Hubbell titled A Country Year. I didn't plan for it to take a year to read, but it did. I only read it at night before I went t
Read more