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He was about three months shy of his nineteenth birthday. The car he was driving hit an ice patch, slid, and slammed broadside into another car.
In one of those sad and strange twists of fate, my dad and stepmom (his mother) were in another state attending my great-uncle's funeral, he'd died a few days before. The police came to their hotel room door at 3 in the morning after one of my stepbrother's friends told them where my dad and stepmom were, and my dad called me the next day. I'll never forget when he told me, it was so surreal it was like it was happening to someone else. I'm sure a lot of you have experienced that, when you're hearing something you just can't believe, you go into that mode where nothing seems real and it's not really happening to you.
I have two other stepbrothers (he was the youngest), and they were devastated for a very long time, as was my stepmom. The rest of us were, too, of course, but not as much as them. He was the one I was closest to, and I've never forgotten him. We can talk about him and look at his pictures and everything else now without the intense pain, we even enjoy recounting and laughing at our favorite stories of him, like how he was always awake at five in the morning on Christmas and wouldn't leave everyone alone until we finally got up and followed him into the living room where the tree and presents were (even when he was a teenager he'd do that, lol!), and how strong an imagination he had.
My other stepbrothers laugh at how he drove them crazy tagging along after them all the time, getting in the way. This past Thanksgiving at my oldest stepbrother's house, he started talking about how much he enjoyed having him in his wedding and the tricks he played on him and his wife. Then he said he wondered what it would have been like had he lived and was there with us, would he have had a family like his brothers, etc., and we all nodded, wondering the same thing.
Both my other stepbrothers were married when the youngest died, but they didn't have kids yet. We all agree that one of our biggest regrets was that he didn't get to see any of his nieces and nephews, and he would have gotten a real kick out of all of them. We keep his memory alive with them all, though, they know who he is and what he was like.
And I think that's all that really matters, (if I may sound like a Hallmark movie, here, lol!) in the end, is to have people who loved you remember you and keep your memory alive long after you're gone. Fifty years from now, our grandchildren will be telling THEIR grandchildren about him and so on. Like the rest of my family, I've always been angry and bitter that his life was cut short so suddenly when he'd barely begun to live. He'd overcome a lot of obstacles, and had become a wonderful young man that we were all very proud of. But I wouldn't have traded knowing him for anything in the world, despite the pain of his loss.
Good Lord, I apologize, I didn't mean to ramble on like this. But I think of you all as my second family, and we share with each other, so I know you don't mind, lol!
I'll close with a poem I wrote for him a few years ago that was actually published in an anthology of the best of poetry.com last year (yes, in a hardcover, which I very proudly show off!) It took a long time before I could even think about putting my feelings into words, but when it was ready, it suddenly just poured out. When my dad and stepmom were first married, he was just five years old, my dad moved to my stepmom's house in the country and it was right next to a small, old country cemetery that we all enjoyed playing in, especially in the summer. He's buried in a church cemetery behind a small, very old church his mother and grandmother and great-grandmother worshipped at, where his graveside service was held before the service that night in his own church.
CEMETERY MEMORIES
I can still see you standing there, balanced
on your favorite tombstone (the circular purple
marble mixed with the sunlight, casting strange
shadows on your arms and face as I looked out
the window of my father's and your mother's house).
It took you twelve more years to fall into that hole.
Along the way, did you see how we would listen to the
Brady Bunch singing "Home on the Range", with the
scratches on the overplayed record making songs
slip and slide? Did you hear our laughter as we ran
through the tiny country cemetery, making up stories
about the faded names on the worn-down stones? And did
you hear the dirt falling into your grave, the thick,
earth-smelling clumps filling up your final room with
somber tones of nature's orchestra as I watched from
the window of the tiny, cream-colored church?
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