Closing of the season.

October is a sad month.  It does not start out as sad, but it ends on a very low note.  1965.  October 30.  Dona Marie turned 1 year old.  Sam was 26 days old.  Duane and I had been married 5 years.  My brother was in a bad car wreck in McPherson, Kansas.  We left the kids with Duane's sister in Jetmore and drove to McPherson hospital arriving about 1:00 AM.  

My mother was alone in the room.  My brother lay swaddled in bandages on a hospital bed that held him in a semi raised postition.  His right leg kicked  constantly.  Mother said they had gone though a stop sign and broadsided a loaded gravel truck.  She thought he was trying to hit the brake, although he was not the driver.  He was incoherent.  Mother was already planning in her mind how she would bring him home and she knew he would be an invalid, but that was her son and she would take care of him.  Jake was her only son.

His name was not Jake, it was Delbert Leroy Bartholomew.  He was born October 5, 1935.  He carried a scar on his right cheek that he got when he was about 9 years old because he snuck up behind a Shetland Pony and "goosed it".  Of course it reacted and kicked him.  What did the silly little shit think would happen?

 

He introduced me to my first husband.  After that we sort of drifted apart.  Distance had a lot to do with that as well as guilt that my husband was not the knight in shining armour that Jake had anticipated for me.  The fact that he fell in love a couple times and now had a son he needed to help raise and another on the way made the distance even greater.

 

I missed Dona's first birthday that year and my sister in law cared for my only son that was 26 days old.  To say I was devastated by his death would be an understatement.  He was so young and vibrant.  He had his whole life ahead of him and I needed him in mine.  But, God had other plans.  

And, that my friends, is what this is all about.  God has a plan for our lives.  I do not know what his plan for me was, and I may never figure it out.  I do know that the little girl above being held up by her sister and brother could have aspired to soaring heights, but fell short of the goal!  I look back and try to see just where I went wrong and it is a mystery to me.  I wanted to be a missionary and when that fell through I just pretty much drifted along with the tide.  So, in all fairness, I think maybe God just put me here in Colorado to kind of shake up the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. 

I have worked to get AIDS awareness to the forefront and what was a killer disease is now a manageable health condition.  

Gays are now accepted as a segment of the population.

I worked the Eleventh Hour in the Hospice program and helped many people smile as they crossed the bar and looked back before leaving this earth in a cloud of fairy dust to meet their saviour.

My children all seem to be successful in one way or another and are responsible citizens.

The important part of all of this is that as I mark this anniversary every year.  I will spend October 30 crying most of the day, but I will do it where no one sees.  I have a shoulder to lean on that even I can not see.  They say "seeing is beleiving," but that is not always true.  I have never seen God, but I do know that without him, I would not be here today. When I am happy he smiles with me.  We have even been known to laugh out loud.  When I cry he holds me.

So rest in peace, my dear brother.  Jake, Josephine, Dorothy, Mary, Mother, Dad, Grandma, Aunts, Uncles, friends, lovers, in-laws and outlaws.   click here