Oh, Brother

Today marks the eight month anniversary of my brother Mike’s death. This coming Saturday, had he lived, he would be turning sixty-nine.

The oldest of six kids, he was the trailblazer. He was the one our mom and dad tried out their parenting techniques on first.

I was third.

We were four years apart, Mike and I, with our sister Sue in between us. He was my big brother and I looked up to him. I would say that, as a child, I kind of idolized him (and maybe I still kinda do).

I would help him and his friends make prank phone calls on our dad’s phone in the basement. (You tube and cable tv hadn’t been invented yet. Luckily, neither had caller ID)

Even though I was never allowed in their fort, I chased away the boys that Mike and his friends didn’t want coming in.

I helped him run away from home once. Had I known he was just hiding in the pop-up camper which was popped down at the time, I wouldn’t have turned him in when it started getting late and he hadn’t come home.

He hit me in the face with a golf club once. I still have a scar over my left eye.

I was standing in front of him and, not wanting me to get hit by a golf ball, he told me to stand over to the side in the yard. Instead, I walked around behind him so I could really see what he was doing and got nailed by his back swing.

I learned to listen to his advice.

When none of his friends were available to help him work on whatever car he had at the moment, I got to learn about open end wrenches, ratchets, and spark plug sockets by handing him the tools he asked for.

The four years he spent in high school, I spent in the last half of grade school.

The four years I spent in high school, he spent in the Navy.

After Mike was out of the Navy and I was out of high school, he took me to the bar at Wallenwein’s on my eighteenth birthday and bought me my first official alcoholic drink.

That was in 1974.

Forty-five years later, in 2019, I was his designated driver when we siblings all got together for the first time since we had buried our parents. While our other siblings had long since gone home, he and I closed the bar at the Roycroft that night. It was my first time ever closing a bar, and his last.

We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

I wanted to take auto mechanics in high school because Mike had and I thought it would be fun working on cars together, but my guidance counselor wouldn’t approve it.

I later enlisted in the Navy as an Engineman trying to follow the trail my brother had blazed for himself.

On my first day of Engineman school when the instructor asked the class to find the spark plugs on the engine at the front of the classroom, I was the only one who stayed in my seat (I was also the only female in the class).

“You’re not going to even look?” the instructor asked me after watching the boys searching frantically, each one trying to be the first to find them.

“No, sir.”

“Would you care to enlighten us as to why?” he asked.

The search stopped. Everyone looked my way.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Because that’s a diesel engine.”

“So.”

“Diesel engines don’t have spark plugs, sir.”

My brother had prepared me well.

~~~

That’s how my brother was. When he learned something or figured something out, he was always willing to share his insights. I guess that’s what a big brother does.

I, along with many others, spent the bulk of our time together here on earth with Mike, learning from his successes and failures.

We spent hours sharing our stories about love and life and work and play, our upbringing, our marriages, our children and grand children and by the end, a great-grandchild.

Mike lived with us–my husband and I and our babies–for a while when he was in a bad way. Emotionally raw and crippled.

Eventually, I gave him the kick in the pants he needed to jump start his comeback.

He would have done the same for me.

Something else he did that meant the world to me–he became my husband’s brother. My husband, Michael, has a sister but no brother. Mike and Michael bonded over many things: the Navy (my husband was an Engineman also), cars, music, hunting, cars, the Navy, and their love of the South.

Did I mention cars?

They became fast friends and now, forty-two years later, my husband has lost his brother, too.

When Mike died, my husband took up the cause and started his own monthly contribution to Wounded Warriors to replace the one they were losing.

~~~

In the later years, my brother found passion and purpose working on Navy ships. Destroyers in particular (he was on the USS Forrest Sherman DD-931 when he was serving).

He was an avid lover of military history and collector of military memorabilia and had collections of ship plaques that ,I believe, could rival the collections of any museum.

I actually was able to participate one year on a work day aboard USS The Sullivans DD-537 in Buffalo’s Naval & Military Park with him and our younger brother Paul who made a career of the Navy.

My brother Mike was a man of many talents: woodworking, car fixing, house remodeling, picture taking, tile laying, sewing (yes, mom taught him how to sew), and carpet laying, among others. And he’d always help out if you needed a hand.

If something needed to be done, whether he’d done it before or not, he’d jump in and give it his all. He was also something of a perfectionist and he worked hard to make each project turn out how he envisioned it.

He was a man who loved his family.

I’d have to say the best day of his life was the day his daughter was born. His grandson and great-grandson were right up there, but Sarah was always the light of his life.

He was a man of deep emotion, although he didn’t always let people see that. He was a man of integrity. He was a man of his word.

He was also a man of fun, and pranks, and he loved his dogs-each and every one he had over his lifetime.

He lived life all in.

He was one of my favorite human beings of all time.

Brother, as we called him, was an anchor to many in the tumultuous sea that is life.

We’ve shared a closeness that I’ll always treasure.

His passing has left a huge hole in my world.

I knew when he left us that the hole would be big.

Huge.

Wide.

Long.

I just didn’t realize how deep.