Brother Bobby......

I know events of today have a huge historical significance, and I feel somewhat guilty that I'm not writing about those. I also feel somewhat unqualified to write about them. I'm not very politically aware, nor do I usually care very much who happens to be sitting in the Oval Office. I pretty much feel sorry for all of them and wouldn't take that job on a dare.

But today would also have been my brother Bobby's 57th birthday.

I can't even fathom that. You would have to have known him to know how impossible it would be to picture him at 57. And I didn't know him very well.

Bobby went to Vietnam. Willingly. In fact, he wanted to go so desperately that because he had a kidney disease that might have kept him out of the Marines, he had a friend give his urine specimen. In one of life's great ironies, our mother later married the father of that friend, so his urine donor would have been his step-brother. If Bobby had lived.

In another of life's great ironies, Bobby came home safely from Vietnam, only to be killed in a motorcycle accident the following year. He was exactly two months from being discharged from the Marines, and he was looking forward (as I remember it) to getting on with his life. I think as desperately as he wanted to get IN the Marines, he was eager to get out. Disillusioned, perhaps, or maybe just tired of it all.

I was only 11 years old when Bobby died, so some of these memories are jumbled up mixtures of misunderstandings in some cases and being too young to understand in others.

Some details of that day, however, are imprinted on my mind with a branding iron.

We had just moved into a new rental house the day before, my mom and I. She had finally left the abusive bastard she dated for four years and only stayed married to for eleven months. I remember people being in and out of the house, sisters and brother and aunt and uncle, only I really wasn't paying much attention to the goings-on because I had discovered a creek out behind the house.

It was June, and I was wading in the creek. Wearing a red dress with white polka dots that came down to my ankles. This was in the early 70's when mini-skirts were all the craze, which makes it all the more retarded that I was wading in the creek in an ankle-length dress.

I must have processed some of the comings and goings, because I looked up and noticed that my sister, who had just left our house headed home to hers, was back. I don't know why that struck me as strange, but it made me curious enough to leave the creek and go back to the house.

When I came in the back door, it seemed that everything and everyone just froze. They all stared at me for a minute, and then there was a flurry of activity.

My aunt was making me take off the ridiculous long dress and put on something else. It was a brown dress with a plaid bodice, and it was the butt-UGLIEST article of clothing you would ever want to see. I would have looked much less ridiculous in the granny number I was wearing in the creek. Maybe she thought it was a costume or something. She couldn't find my shoes, and she said never mind, I could just go barefoot.

I should have known then something was terribly wrong.

Only the basest of people went out in public barefoot.

We went to the hospital, and I guess somewhere along the line I ascertained that Bobby had been in an accident. He had wrecked so many cars in my young life that I don't remember being particularly surprised or upset that it had happened again. I was just annoyed that when we got to the hospital, they said only my mother and one male relative could see him. Nurse Jane became almost hysterical at that, so I knew better than to ask if I could go. I was way down the pecking order from her, and if she couldn't go, I knew I didn't have a prayer.

The waiting room was packed with people I knew. Then I heard Katydid on the phone with our father, trying to make him understand. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing he was drunk, because Katydid got frustrated with him.

Then I heard her say, "Daddy, Bobby is dead." And she said something about a motorcycle.

I thought in my 11-year-old brain, "Now that's just wrong. Telling the man his son is dead just to get him to come to the hospital. She has stooped to a new low."

So when she got off the phone, I asked, "Why did you tell Daddy that Bobby was dead?"

Katydid was very puzzled. After all, I'd been right there the whole time. "But he IS dead."

And that's when I knew.

See, there was a reason for the confusion. Grown-ups don't tell kids everything, and rightfully so. I only knew the bits and pieces I had picked up from the snatches of conversation I'd heard that day.

Bobby had also been in an accident the night before. He totaled two cars, both of them his. He was driving one of his cars home from Camp LeJeune and he was towing another one. Somewhere around Columbia, South Carolina, the tow bar broke and flipped both cars. Daddy had to go get him in the middle of the night, and I remember hearing Daddy say later that when he saw the condition of those two cars, he wondered how anyone escaped alive.

Less than 24 hours later, Bobby was dead. He was trying out a motorcycle his friend had just bought, only intending to ride it around the block. He was wild and reckless and a daredevil, and I'm sure he was probably doing something foolish or careless or just plain stupid. Or maybe it just wasn't his weekend.

He was only 20.

The last words he ever spoke to me were on the telephone. He said, "See ya, Fats."

And that's okay.

Christmas Traditions.....

My older siblings had a Christmas tradition that I missed out on because I was the baby. They would always burn candles on Christmas Eve, even when they had to hide it from our mother because she would have A) kicked their fannies and B) thrown the candles in the trash. We had two houses burn down when I was young, though (a couple of years apart, I think), so I can kind of understand her paranoia.

When Bobby was in Vietnam, he and my eldest sister, Nurse Jane, planned a time when they would both be burning candles at the same time on Christmas Eve. This was naturally in the days before email and internet, so I can't imagine how they managed to figure out the time difference. I don't mean they were lacking the intelligence to figure it out. But I mean, Bobby didn't exactly write a letter saying, "Okay, it's 8:00 PM here now. What time is it there." And two weeks later when the letter arrived, Jane would say, "Oh, it's _____ o'clock here now. So the time difference must be _____ hours."

Bobby came home safely from Vietnam, only to die in a motorcycle accident the next year, just months before he was to be discharged from the Marines. After he died, we started the tradition of gathering at the cemetery where he is buried and burning candles and singing "Silent Night." Apparently that was Bobby's favorite Christmas song. It was beautiful, seeing the burning candles from the highway. Some years we gathered there only to watch the wind blow the candles out repeatedly or we stood in a light rain and hoped we could keep the candles lit just long enough to sing.

Some people have thought it was rather morbid of my family to gather at a cemetery on Christmas Eve. But I loved the tradition, although it always made me sad that Bobby couldn't be there with us. I was only eleven when he died, and I always wondered at each stage of my life what he would have thought about me. More about him next month, on his birthday.

As we all married (and married and married) and started families of our own, it became too difficult for us all to gather on Christmas Eve. It is too far for some to drive for such a short time, and there are always children and grandchildren to get to other parents' and grandparents' homes. So we each carry on the tradition in our own homes, lighting a candle for each person present and one for Bobby. This way Bobby gets lots of candles instead of just one.


Before we go to bed, I'll play "Silent Night" on the piano; maybe I'll sing, maybe not. [My Christmas gift to you is that I did NOT make a video of that.] The two years that Sweet Girl has been in the Persian Gulf on Christmas Eve, I couldn't make it through the first verse. This year isn't quite that sad, because I know she's only down in Florida and not way "over there."

But I still wish Bobby and hubby could have known each other.

Merry Christmas, y'all!