Wasted relationship

 

Today, June 9 would have been my brother's, birthday, his first since he died. It was the day each year I sent him a card usually a Jacquie Lawson card. 

We may not have had much contact, but he was still my brother. The longest time I spent with him was when we flew to Florida and I introduced my father and brother after 22 years of no contact. 

Sometimes wasted relationships are the saddest.

I was six. My mother was giving me my bath before bedtime. She told me my father had planted a seed in her tummy that would be a little brother or sister. For a couple of years, I pictured my father in miniature with a minuscule hoe and watering can planting what would become J. Only later I learned there was a different way to make a woman pregnant.

The age difference us added and took away normal sibling rivalry. I've forgiven him for knocking me down the stairs by hitting me in the back with a suitcase. I've forgiven him tearing up my term paper. At least the torn pieces convinced the teacher it wasn't a dog ate my report story. In those non word processing day typing a paper was painful from trying to make corrections to inserting footnote.

I don't know if he ever forgave me for eating his last cupcake.

He was 12 when I moved first to college then to Europe with my new husband.

There were some good times to remember like family game time, his creating meals at the apartment complex club house. He cosigned for a car loan for me when he had credit and I didn't.

Politically we weren't from different planets but different galaxies. Since we both voted in Massachusetts, I figured we cancelled each other out.

When my mother was dying we worked well together.

I was shocked when my sister-in-law told me he was dying. He was so much younger than I am.

Some years he acknowledged my birthday.  When I visited his daughter pre-covid, he sent his greetings. She and I have developed an internet relationship.

My daughter has a close relationship with her half brother and his family. I'm thrilled she does. I don't want her to have the regrets I do.

Relationships that rot? I don't want any more of them. Life is too short.