A Death in the Family
Oct. 24th, 2010 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kybearfuzzIt's been a rough few days. The short story of it is this: my older brother Ronnie passed away on Wednesday from apparent complications to cancer. Funeral in Dalton, GA on Friday. Burial in Lily, KY today. Home finally just a few hours ago.
Mom's Five Kids in January 2000 -- My brother Ronnie second from left
The rest of it is very long. I'm not sure why I'm typing the rest up, I think as a reference to me.
I was sitting in my office on Wednesday afternoon. It was a dull day, not much going on but paperwork, when my phone rang. I saw the "606" area code on the caller ID, but didn't recognize the number, so I thought it was likely a work-related call. My sister was on the other end. I began to get worried as Rhonda doesn't call me at work unless it's an emergency. She immediately started off with "I have some bad news..." I could tell she'd been crying and my immediate thought was that something had happened to Mom. She didn't leave me guessing, she told me that our brother Ronnie had passed away earlier in the morning. Ronnie lived with his identical twin Donnie in Dalton, GA.
Rhonda had not told Mom yet, but was heading that way to tell her before another relative inadvertently spilled it. Mom has blood pressure problems and this news could have easily sent it skyrocketing and someone needed to be there. Some of my family are pretty clueless and would have revealed it without thinking about Mom being alone. I quickly finished up the work stuff, made arrangements to be gone, came home and packed like a crazed madman, and headed off to Corbin.
It's nearly a three-hour drive between my house and Mom's. It's a lot of time to think. I felt a bit shocked and sad, but no tears had come. I felt guilty about that. I'd not seen or talked to Ronnie in ten years, since our grandmother's funeral in 2000, after which the above photo had been taken. It's not that I avoided him or him me. Our paths just never crossed. He lived in Georgia and I lived here and we never seemed to make it to Mom's at the same time. Of my three brothers, he and I were the least close.
Donnie and Ronnie are identical twins, Mom's kids from her first marriage. They were 15 years old by the time I came into the world, so in my mind they have always been adults. By the time my first memories were coming about around age three, they were legal adults. Donnie was already married and had a son. Ronnie was just back from a stint the military and dating Tonya, the pretty neighbor girl from across the street, the one with the extremely old and crotchety father and big fluffy white Husky dog who was always constipated.
By the time I was four, Ronnie and Tonya went to King's Island in Cincinnati with my dad, Mom, Rhonda, me and my twin Joe. He got us sick on the tea-cup ride. Eventually Ronnie and Tonya got married. Joe and I were the ring-bearers, which was a mistake in itself, as little boys should not be trusted with small shiny objects. We naturally got the rings mixed up. During the vows, I tugged on Ronnie pants. He turned to look at me and I asked "Are we done yet?"
By the time I started school, Ronnie and Donnie could buy and drink alcohol.... legally. When I hit eight, Ronnie became a dad to his only child, a son named Michael. A few years later, he and Tonya divorced and Ronnie moved back to Georgia where his father owned a car dealership. It was at this time that our time together became fewer and fewer as we lived so far apart. He would pop in for a day every few months and then be gone again. Often he would only stay for a few hours before leaving to go to another relative's home.
I'm not sure when it developed, but Ronnie had a drinking problem and also had trouble with drugs. My first view of it was when I was a teenager, about 15, when he pulled up across our lawn in a white Cadillac. He was drunk and he had a bleached-blonde skank of a woman with him. Both of them drinking a potent potable out of two white, styrofoam cups. Mom wasn't home at the time, so luckily they waited around. In regards to his lady friend, Ron slurred the following compliment into my ear, "This one's a keeper. She's been fixed, so I can't knock her up...."
"Nice...," I told him with a grin, "I can't wait for you to tell that to Mom..."
Their relationship didn't work out. He got married a second time a bit later, to a sweet lady who had a blonde hellion of a teenage daughter who took an immediate fixation one weekend on the twin, of whom she'd been warned to stay away. There wasn't a lot of sleeping in the house that weekend as Mom stood guard to make sure no sneaking about was happening in the house. The girl thought it was cute to take a rubber band and snap Joe on the neck or arm with it, leaving slight welts that raised on his skin. Joe, ever the gentleman with a girl, just took it in stride. My sister, being protective, basically took her aside and said if she hit him with a rubber band again, the blonde hair of hers was going to be yanked out by the dark roots. The girl might have been the hellion, but Rhonda can be a hellcat in a fight, a fact of which I am oddly proud.
At 17, I left for college and my interaction with Ronnie diminished even more. In fact, I don't recall seeing him again after that, until our grandmother's funeral some ten years later. I'd heard through Mom that he'd been drinking even more. The comments about Ron's drug use coming from my oldest nephew Chris, Donnie's son who also lived in Georgia, but ventured to Kentucky often to see his mother.
I thought about these facts over and over again on that long trip to Corbin, trying to recall memories I had of Ron, and I'm ashamed to say that I have very few that were special.
By the time I reached Mom's, Rhonda had given her the bad news. She had reacted explosively to it understandably, but now she'd calmed down and gotten her blood pressure under control. The phone calls were now pouring in from family and friends.
Our other older brother Donnie is in a wheelchair and lives in his home with a live-in girlfriend named Diane, who has recently recovered from a brain hemorrhage that has left her a bit... off. Rhonda did not want Donnie to have to try to make the funeral arrangements with no other family. The tentative plan was that the funeral would be in Dalton and the burial at a family plot in Kentucky. So we decided to drive down very early to Dalton, GA to help out. I stayed at Mom's to keep her company while Rhonda and Joe went home to get settled and packed.
The next morning, I got Mom up at 4:30 AM. Mom, like me, is not a morning person. So I showered to give her a chance to wake up. Once I was dressed and ready, Mom went to get ready herself when I heard a huge thud in her bedroom. I ran in there to find her laying in the floor in her nightgown with her pants tangled about her knees. She'd been putting them on and tripped. She'd banged her knuckle on the closet door and bruised her lower back. A knot formed on her knuckle, turning purple and growing larger by the second. So Joe and Rhonda arrived to leave and we set up a new plan. Joe took Mom to the ER to get her hand examined while Rhonda and I left for Dalton. Joe and Mom would come down later.
Donnie was upset that we had come down. He wanted us to stay with Mom, but was surprised (and I think happy) that she felt like traveling there. Mom hates to travel and her health is always a factor to deal with.
Rhonda and I met Donnie and his group at the funeral home. I'd not met Diane before, but I can honestly say she's unique. She's very loud and has no volume control, yet has no hearing problem. The thing that freaked both me and Rhonda out was that she refers to our brother Donnie as "Daddy." Now they have no kids together, so the reference is ... well... creepy. She responds to any direction from Donnie with a loud "Okay, Daddy!" *cringe* This was especially creepy when she did this at the funeral home while we were making arrangements with the director.
We went to Donnie's home and finally Mom and the twin showed up. Donnie was almost visibly elated to see Mom (Donnie tends to be a bit stoic). I think that during this kind of situation, anyone would want their mom.
The rest of the time was spent trying to figure out veteran benefits for Ronnie, insurance policies, and making arrangements for the burial in Kentucky. The next day we got up and dressed for the funeral, business-casual as Donnie directed. In the late afternoon we made it to visitation and I saw Ronnie for the first time. While some of the features were familiar, he looked very different than the last time I'd seen him. Worse still, I think the funeral home did a poor job with his remains. His skin was overly gray and Donnie says he looked "bloated." I hated for Mom to see him like that.
Over the course of three hours, there was maybe 15 people besides family. I'm not sure if the information wasn't well sent, or if Ron simply had very few local friends.
As we were wrapping things up, Donnie and Mom went up to Ron one last time and broke down. Being an identical twin to Ron, I can only imagine how lost he must be. The two of them were so close, each a constant presence in a way to the other. It is like Donnie lost half of his soul. And Mom is experiencing a pain that every parent fears, I think, the loss of a child. At 71, Mom probably never thought she'd be here to feel such a thing.
We went back to Donnie's and said good-bye for the night, then drove back to Corbin. Donnie and a group would be coming up the next morning, but Mom, Joe and Rhonda (and I) preferred to head back that night so we could get a few things ready the following day.
We had a brief burial ceremony at the cemetery, along with a lot of our local, extended family. Everyone had a chance to say good-bye.
Donnie and the Dalton crowd left soon after for Georgia. Donnie is just that way, no lingering, just a burning desire to head back. A good number of us headed to Rhonda's where some of her friends had been cooking lasagna and garlic bread and brought multiple deserts while we were gone. After eating, we sat on the front porch and then at the new fire-pit they are building, spending time laughing and reminiscing about family, laughing a great deal about the past and each other. This thankfully is how my family deals with grief, we may cry for a while, but none of us can ever keep from laughing, especially with the natural comedians that populate our family tree. Though I do think we spend a lot of time on fart jokes.
Taking a page from Donnie, after the food and laughs, I decided to head back to Northern Kentucky myself and said my good-byes. I have a strong desire to sleep in my own bed and wanted to avoid the drive back the next morning. On the drive home, I reflected on my drive down earlier in the week. I didn't have a lot of memories that I could recall between me and Ronnie specifically. I wish I had something more profound to say other than it was the circumstances of our individual lives that left us that way. I just need to strive to have more happy memories with the siblings I have left.
Mom's Five Kids in January 2000 -- My brother Ronnie second from left
The rest of it is very long. I'm not sure why I'm typing the rest up, I think as a reference to me.
I was sitting in my office on Wednesday afternoon. It was a dull day, not much going on but paperwork, when my phone rang. I saw the "606" area code on the caller ID, but didn't recognize the number, so I thought it was likely a work-related call. My sister was on the other end. I began to get worried as Rhonda doesn't call me at work unless it's an emergency. She immediately started off with "I have some bad news..." I could tell she'd been crying and my immediate thought was that something had happened to Mom. She didn't leave me guessing, she told me that our brother Ronnie had passed away earlier in the morning. Ronnie lived with his identical twin Donnie in Dalton, GA.
Rhonda had not told Mom yet, but was heading that way to tell her before another relative inadvertently spilled it. Mom has blood pressure problems and this news could have easily sent it skyrocketing and someone needed to be there. Some of my family are pretty clueless and would have revealed it without thinking about Mom being alone. I quickly finished up the work stuff, made arrangements to be gone, came home and packed like a crazed madman, and headed off to Corbin.
It's nearly a three-hour drive between my house and Mom's. It's a lot of time to think. I felt a bit shocked and sad, but no tears had come. I felt guilty about that. I'd not seen or talked to Ronnie in ten years, since our grandmother's funeral in 2000, after which the above photo had been taken. It's not that I avoided him or him me. Our paths just never crossed. He lived in Georgia and I lived here and we never seemed to make it to Mom's at the same time. Of my three brothers, he and I were the least close.
Donnie and Ronnie are identical twins, Mom's kids from her first marriage. They were 15 years old by the time I came into the world, so in my mind they have always been adults. By the time my first memories were coming about around age three, they were legal adults. Donnie was already married and had a son. Ronnie was just back from a stint the military and dating Tonya, the pretty neighbor girl from across the street, the one with the extremely old and crotchety father and big fluffy white Husky dog who was always constipated.
By the time I was four, Ronnie and Tonya went to King's Island in Cincinnati with my dad, Mom, Rhonda, me and my twin Joe. He got us sick on the tea-cup ride. Eventually Ronnie and Tonya got married. Joe and I were the ring-bearers, which was a mistake in itself, as little boys should not be trusted with small shiny objects. We naturally got the rings mixed up. During the vows, I tugged on Ronnie pants. He turned to look at me and I asked "Are we done yet?"
By the time I started school, Ronnie and Donnie could buy and drink alcohol.... legally. When I hit eight, Ronnie became a dad to his only child, a son named Michael. A few years later, he and Tonya divorced and Ronnie moved back to Georgia where his father owned a car dealership. It was at this time that our time together became fewer and fewer as we lived so far apart. He would pop in for a day every few months and then be gone again. Often he would only stay for a few hours before leaving to go to another relative's home.
I'm not sure when it developed, but Ronnie had a drinking problem and also had trouble with drugs. My first view of it was when I was a teenager, about 15, when he pulled up across our lawn in a white Cadillac. He was drunk and he had a bleached-blonde skank of a woman with him. Both of them drinking a potent potable out of two white, styrofoam cups. Mom wasn't home at the time, so luckily they waited around. In regards to his lady friend, Ron slurred the following compliment into my ear, "This one's a keeper. She's been fixed, so I can't knock her up...."
"Nice...," I told him with a grin, "I can't wait for you to tell that to Mom..."
Their relationship didn't work out. He got married a second time a bit later, to a sweet lady who had a blonde hellion of a teenage daughter who took an immediate fixation one weekend on the twin, of whom she'd been warned to stay away. There wasn't a lot of sleeping in the house that weekend as Mom stood guard to make sure no sneaking about was happening in the house. The girl thought it was cute to take a rubber band and snap Joe on the neck or arm with it, leaving slight welts that raised on his skin. Joe, ever the gentleman with a girl, just took it in stride. My sister, being protective, basically took her aside and said if she hit him with a rubber band again, the blonde hair of hers was going to be yanked out by the dark roots. The girl might have been the hellion, but Rhonda can be a hellcat in a fight, a fact of which I am oddly proud.
At 17, I left for college and my interaction with Ronnie diminished even more. In fact, I don't recall seeing him again after that, until our grandmother's funeral some ten years later. I'd heard through Mom that he'd been drinking even more. The comments about Ron's drug use coming from my oldest nephew Chris, Donnie's son who also lived in Georgia, but ventured to Kentucky often to see his mother.
I thought about these facts over and over again on that long trip to Corbin, trying to recall memories I had of Ron, and I'm ashamed to say that I have very few that were special.
By the time I reached Mom's, Rhonda had given her the bad news. She had reacted explosively to it understandably, but now she'd calmed down and gotten her blood pressure under control. The phone calls were now pouring in from family and friends.
Our other older brother Donnie is in a wheelchair and lives in his home with a live-in girlfriend named Diane, who has recently recovered from a brain hemorrhage that has left her a bit... off. Rhonda did not want Donnie to have to try to make the funeral arrangements with no other family. The tentative plan was that the funeral would be in Dalton and the burial at a family plot in Kentucky. So we decided to drive down very early to Dalton, GA to help out. I stayed at Mom's to keep her company while Rhonda and Joe went home to get settled and packed.
The next morning, I got Mom up at 4:30 AM. Mom, like me, is not a morning person. So I showered to give her a chance to wake up. Once I was dressed and ready, Mom went to get ready herself when I heard a huge thud in her bedroom. I ran in there to find her laying in the floor in her nightgown with her pants tangled about her knees. She'd been putting them on and tripped. She'd banged her knuckle on the closet door and bruised her lower back. A knot formed on her knuckle, turning purple and growing larger by the second. So Joe and Rhonda arrived to leave and we set up a new plan. Joe took Mom to the ER to get her hand examined while Rhonda and I left for Dalton. Joe and Mom would come down later.
Donnie was upset that we had come down. He wanted us to stay with Mom, but was surprised (and I think happy) that she felt like traveling there. Mom hates to travel and her health is always a factor to deal with.
Rhonda and I met Donnie and his group at the funeral home. I'd not met Diane before, but I can honestly say she's unique. She's very loud and has no volume control, yet has no hearing problem. The thing that freaked both me and Rhonda out was that she refers to our brother Donnie as "Daddy." Now they have no kids together, so the reference is ... well... creepy. She responds to any direction from Donnie with a loud "Okay, Daddy!" *cringe* This was especially creepy when she did this at the funeral home while we were making arrangements with the director.
We went to Donnie's home and finally Mom and the twin showed up. Donnie was almost visibly elated to see Mom (Donnie tends to be a bit stoic). I think that during this kind of situation, anyone would want their mom.
The rest of the time was spent trying to figure out veteran benefits for Ronnie, insurance policies, and making arrangements for the burial in Kentucky. The next day we got up and dressed for the funeral, business-casual as Donnie directed. In the late afternoon we made it to visitation and I saw Ronnie for the first time. While some of the features were familiar, he looked very different than the last time I'd seen him. Worse still, I think the funeral home did a poor job with his remains. His skin was overly gray and Donnie says he looked "bloated." I hated for Mom to see him like that.
Over the course of three hours, there was maybe 15 people besides family. I'm not sure if the information wasn't well sent, or if Ron simply had very few local friends.
As we were wrapping things up, Donnie and Mom went up to Ron one last time and broke down. Being an identical twin to Ron, I can only imagine how lost he must be. The two of them were so close, each a constant presence in a way to the other. It is like Donnie lost half of his soul. And Mom is experiencing a pain that every parent fears, I think, the loss of a child. At 71, Mom probably never thought she'd be here to feel such a thing.
We went back to Donnie's and said good-bye for the night, then drove back to Corbin. Donnie and a group would be coming up the next morning, but Mom, Joe and Rhonda (and I) preferred to head back that night so we could get a few things ready the following day.
We had a brief burial ceremony at the cemetery, along with a lot of our local, extended family. Everyone had a chance to say good-bye.
Donnie and the Dalton crowd left soon after for Georgia. Donnie is just that way, no lingering, just a burning desire to head back. A good number of us headed to Rhonda's where some of her friends had been cooking lasagna and garlic bread and brought multiple deserts while we were gone. After eating, we sat on the front porch and then at the new fire-pit they are building, spending time laughing and reminiscing about family, laughing a great deal about the past and each other. This thankfully is how my family deals with grief, we may cry for a while, but none of us can ever keep from laughing, especially with the natural comedians that populate our family tree. Though I do think we spend a lot of time on fart jokes.
Taking a page from Donnie, after the food and laughs, I decided to head back to Northern Kentucky myself and said my good-byes. I have a strong desire to sleep in my own bed and wanted to avoid the drive back the next morning. On the drive home, I reflected on my drive down earlier in the week. I didn't have a lot of memories that I could recall between me and Ronnie specifically. I wish I had something more profound to say other than it was the circumstances of our individual lives that left us that way. I just need to strive to have more happy memories with the siblings I have left.
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Date: 2010-10-24 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 05:40 am (UTC)Hugs.
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Date: 2010-10-24 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 06:37 am (UTC)i'll be thinking of you xo
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Date: 2010-10-24 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 09:49 am (UTC)Big hugs.
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Date: 2010-10-24 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 06:00 pm (UTC)I think your resolution for better memories with surviving family is inspirational.
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Date: 2010-10-24 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-25 04:28 am (UTC)HUGS!
Sorry for your loss
Date: 2010-10-25 06:07 am (UTC)Huge Hugs!
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Date: 2010-10-25 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-10-26 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-26 08:11 pm (UTC)Your last paragraph summed things up pretty well. The different lives that you and Ronnie lived were too diverse to have a deep relationship. You also had other family around to share your life with too, so it's not like you were a recluse from the world. Regardless, I sense the emptiness you feel. This has certainly reinforced your sibling connections and you will be a better man for it. Glad you were also there to take care of your mom and see her through this. Your good humor will serve your family well for years to come.