Tragedy Strikes Again!

Earlier this year, one of my older brothers informed me that the doctors had found a spot on one of his lungs. He said that he was going to follow up with tests, and keep me posted. He did, but he kept downplaying it, AND he kept right on smoking.

He said if it was cancer, (and it was), he had brought this day on himself, and he had no one to blame. He also said that he had tried many times to quit smoking but was never successful. He said Linda (my nickname); I am not scared, and I am not going to try to run from this. They have all kinds of appointments for me, but I am just going to keep on living until. Of course, I cried. Of course, I wanted him to beat this thing, but somewhere in my spirit, I knew that he just wasn't telling me the entire story and that he had chosen not to fight a losing battle. He also decided to keep doing what he had always done -- smoke.

My brother seemed to have smoked as long as I can remember. I am not sure of the brand from the early years, but like most Newport cigarettes became his cigarette of choice at one time. Not sure of the brand that he smokes now, but he continued to smoke all the way into his seventies. My brother is a few years older than me, and like me grew up during the hard times in America, especially in the South. He was not afforded a full opportunity to be the best that he could be because our father did not believe in education. Our father believed in skilled labor of any kind, and since he was a plumber, he was hell bent on making all of us plumbers. So my brother became a plumber, and worked for Williams and Son Plumbing, but hated it with a passion. Later in life, he became an all around handy-man, but plumbing was always his primary work.

As God would have it, Charles was and remained a soft-spoken, kind, and loving brother. He along with one of my other brothers shared in some of my father's most horrific acts of cruelty, but they survived. One brother died last year, January 5, 2014, and it seems that soon I will be losing another brother. Both my favorites. Both made me the center of their lives. Both always made me feel special. Out of all of my siblings, these made it their business to keep up with me and to stay in touch.

I am feeling some kind away about all of this. It has taken a year to stop waiting for the phone to ring and hearing my brother's voice on the other end. Now, it seems that I will have to learn this all over again.