Alone

I was addressing Christmas cards the other day (I like to get them out as early as I can) and among the list of 90 some odd names and addresses it was the first one that my eyes went to:
Mark Savage
PO Box 52
Harvest, AL
This had been my brother’s mailing address for the past 20 years of his 55 years on this Earth. This was the address that I sent my first Christmas card from my very first place of my own when I was in my early 20’s. This was the address from which I was guaranteed a Christmas card every year. It would be without fail a western Santa card: Santa on a horse somewhere in the snow with fences and pine trees. And it always made me feel proud to be on his Christmas list (his list consisted of a very few people and if you were on it you could consider yourself special) and his card took its rightful place at the top of my front door, right next to my mother-in-law’s “Florida” Christmas card (you know the ones: sandy beaches with palm trees decorated with Christmas lights). This year I will be leaving that spot empty as a reminder (not that I need one) of my first Christmas without my parents or any siblings, effectively an “orphan”. Of course my parents and my other brother and my sister have been gone for several years and Mark and I were the only ones left. And now I am the last man standing. It’s funny how heavy that moniker is.

I have been through grief before many times. This is different than grief. This is a feeling of separation that I have never experienced before. I am the only one left in my immediate family. No one else knows what I was like as a baby, or a little kid. No one knows how much I loved Snoopy and hated fractions and how I used to fall asleep between the bed and the wall in the summer because the wall was so cool (something my youngest Jakob does now). There is no one left to remind me of how silly I acted the first time I fell in love or how proud I was of my first job. There is no one left to connect with on that level. It leaves me feeling almost lost and certainly confused.

I can tell my boys stories about their “other” grandmother and grandfathers that they have never met and I can tell them about their Aunt Becky and their Uncle Kevin but it isn’t the same thing as being there. They knew Uncle Mark and they miss him too. If they want to talk about him we do but, as is the way of children, they don’t bring him up very often and I am glad. It means they are concentrating on the business of living, as I am most days too.
It may seem that I am wallowing in self-pity. I assure you that I am not. Some days it is necessary to stop and acknowledge how you are feeling in that moment and when the moment has passed to move on. I have stopped, I have acknowledged, and now I am moving on.

Peace allllll………………………………….