In closing

“He loved golfing, fishing, cooking and traveling.”
As the preacher read from my brother’s obituary, my sister’s words rang through my head. “I had a brother, but you know, I didn’t really even know him.”
It’s been a week since my brother died, and I’ve been so busy focusing on being there for my dad and sisters that I haven’t really thought about the loss for myself, but yesterday it came over me a bit. I didn’t know that he and I had so much in common, and sitting there in the pew with my family, I really wished I had had the opportunity to get to know him as an adult. I think we could have actually talked, as adult siblings, but with more than 25 years between us, I never got the chance to know him. And now I never will. That, more than almost anything, made me sad and reflective, and I’m reminded of another loss, this one more close, but somehow still not as moving as it maybe should have been.
My maternal grandmother lived all her life in Colombia, South America. My wish as I matured and watched her age, was to learn enough Spanish to have a complete, raw and private conversation with her before she died. It never happened, because my Spanish is never as good as it should be, and it’s something that makes me sad to this day, when I think about it. But we don’t get second chances, and yes, of course I know this without the weight of a funeral hanging over me, but it seems like it takes a funeral or another sobering event to remember this. Afterwards, we vow to not take things for granted, insist upon rebuilding old bridges and finishing unattended business with others.
Why do we wait until it’s too late? I don’t think my brother and dad had fully patched up their past squabbles, and I don’t know how that makes dad feel. I know that I’ll never forget seeing a friend on the street and not stopping to say hi to her, only to learn of her death in a car wreck weeks later. Shit like that is spooky, and it happens often enough that it’s not just random. I wish I could come up with some sort of lesson for myself in all of this, but there isn’t one, at least, not a new one. I hate that it was a funeral that brought me home to family and gave me a chance to reconnect with the most important people in my life, but I’m thankful for each day that I’ve spent here on the farm, with my mom and dad, sisters, nieces, nephews and others. I may not have many memories of my brother, and unfortunately, that makes losing him a bit easier. Losing the other parts of my family will hurt more, because I’m closer to them, but in the end, it’s these memories and these interactions that truly make life worth living.