Once There Was a Way To Get Back Homeward (Golden Slumbers)
Golden Slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles Await you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a Lullabye
((I’ve found myself playing this many times these past few years))
((please press play before reading))
I’m getting older. New families are beginning. Old ones are fading away. I feel the transition. I’m 24 years old. In a little over a month I will be 25. I think my father’s father passed when he was 32. I didn’t get to know him. George. A big irish man. He worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard most of his life. Only 7 more years of my dad? A few of my friends never really had theirs. Now, more of my friends have lost theirs. My father just called me and told me about my great Aunt passing.
Aunt Fran. She was 83 years old, lived a long life in a Brooklyn. A loyal Mets fan and a true servant of the faith but NEVER not once did she “preach” to me or force me to believe in anything. Everything I learned from her I learned from how she treated me and everyone else. She didn’t tell me how to act. A few years ago their (her and my grandmother’s) older sister passed away from cancer. I am thinking now of them reuniting. They loved to play tennis & golf. I see them on infinite greens. I said in a tweet I want to name my first daughter (I suspect I will have daughters) Lucia, after her. I had that thought a few years ago and it’s stuck with me, I still believe in it. A beautiful name. They were both ill before they passed, and they both lived long lives. Neither of them had children but that was unnecessary as they both have many nieces and nephews who loved them. Who will remember them.
My grandmother is now going to be alone in her big old house in Brooklyn,without her sisters that have lived in the 2-family home for 50+ years now. My grandma, being my grandma, is cool though, she has friends, has been through pain before, is active in a neighborhood(bay ridge) theatre company, and she’s like me. Or rather, I’m like her. She goes on. I am one of 3. My grandmother was 1 of 3. I am definitely very much my own, independent. But without my brothers? Without the only 2 people on the planet who know exactly what I’ve been through since birth? 1 of 3 alone is a hard spot to be in.
I was going to write a blog about my mother tonight. I’ve saved the draft I started but I will say that one of the major points in my life, in my mother’s life, in my family’s life, was the loss of her older sister. I will elaborate on that in the other post but my point is we may fight with our brothers and sisters, we may say we hate them and genuinely mean it, but in the end, NO ONE on this Earth knows you better than your brother and sisters.
The importance of brothers & sisters.
We cannot rely or be dependent on parents or elders to be around forever to teach us. But we can rely on each other, brothers & sisters, to be here as we’ve been from birth. I have two brothers by blood, but I have many more brothers & sisters by LOVE. My peers. My family. We are here for each other. We are the only ones who know what each other have been through.
These past few years I’ve been to more wakes and funerals than in the 20 years or so prior. I didn’t go all of the ones I should have. I just couldn’t. Friends. Union brothers & sisters. Family. I don’t think there’s a black cloud around me, I think it’s natural, and I am seeing this because life is going by that fast.
I’m not sure that I am “good” at emotions. I know what I want to say. I know what I feel. I worry if I’ve shown enough compassion, if the people I care about know how much I care.
And then after all this agony and anxiety I find a song and I say, listen to this song..
and everything is alright.
to my brothers & sisters still here
thank you for understanding
peace & LIGHT
t
