Anticipated vs. Unanticipated Loss

The following essay was written by my dear friend and fellow writer, Robert Blackwell. His heart often pours out poetry, but since gaining his well-earned freedom from the daily 9-5 grind, his writing has expanded to include this essay and most recently, a play. He lives with his wife and sons in Columbus, Ohio.

Which is easier – anticipated loss, where the ability to plan one’s goodbyes to a loved one is tempered by the painful anticipation of same; or unanticipated loss, which happens like the proverbial thief in the night, robbing us of that which might be precious but in so doing allowing a faster healing process in the ripping of Band-Aid from the skin of the heart?

I submit two examples from my life, both of which involve my most treasured sibling.

Unanticipated loss

I was the only child my parents had together, but I am the youngest of my mother’s two sons and my father’s five children (three sons, two daughters).  My maternal half-brother (hereafter referred to as my brother) took me completely under his wing, which is unusual for a teenager with a younger sibling, but he loved me and that’s how it was.  He made me his world, and I knew it.

I was born in 1960…the start of the era of love, but also of civil rights…and Vietnam.  My brother graduated from high school in 1966, and had to face the choice of where to perform his military service.  With the draft in full swing his only choices were to accept assignment to the Marine Corps or enlist in one of the other branches.  My father, an Army Air Force veteran from World War 2, steered my brother into the Air Force and off he went to the service.  I knew none of the dynamics of the situation; I knew only that one day he didn’t live in our house any more.  At six years old I couldn’t express how I felt about it, but I knew I missed him.  It felt like I was suddenly missing a limb.  (I’ve had amputees tell me that they can still feel the lost limb, and the feeling is part of the pain of it being gone.)  

Combined with my parents’ divorce, a family of four had contracted into two by the spring of 1967, and I keenly felt the emptiness of our house.  I felt so lonely, but I had only myself to rely on for my emotions; neither my mother nor my father ever asked me how I felt about these things.  From time to time, I would go to bed and he would be there when I woke up, home on leave.  I was happy to have him at home and would feel much better about life until I went to bed and he would be gone when I awakened.  I reasoned that going to sleep is what sent him away, so when he came home I’d fight sleep to keep him here.  Eventually my mother figured out that’s what I was doing, so when it came time for him to leave, they took me to the bus station and made me watch him get on the bus.  I couldn’t stop crying; I’d fought sleep just to keep him at home and it didn’t work anymore.  Once I knew that, I went to bed and slept with a broken heart.

My brother left the service in 1970, but did not come back to Columbus, Ohio to live, opting to stay in Denver, Colorado.  I saw him at home twice more after that: in 1973 my mother had major surgery, so he stayed for a month; and in 1978 he spent a couple of weeks with us to commemorate my high school graduation.  I eventually got used to his physical absence from my life because we remained emotionally close.

I learned the reasons he never came back home in 1987, during a phone conversation between us.  He’d begun a gay lifestyle while in the Air Force and my mother didn’t approve.  He also didn’t want to influence me in the same direction, so our contact was minimal all those years.  My heart shattered once again to realize what he sacrificed and what it had cost me; I wanted to reach through the phone, pull him back through it, and never stop embracing him.  I let him know, in no uncertain terms, that the distance between us did not lessen my love for him; it simply increased the hurt.  I also told him that I would not wait for our mother to die in order to try and have a relationship with him.  We unburdened our hearts to each other and in the process became the closest two people you’d ever find.

Anticipated loss

Our closeness lasted without being tested for 3 ½ years.  I surprised him with a Christmas visit in 1988, where my mother and I got to meet his partner and his partner’s family.  In 1990 he flew here to be a treasured part of my wedding party.  In March 1991 my mother gave me the news that my brother tested HIV-positive due to promiscuity with similarly infected partners.  I’d asked him before he died why he did such a reckless thing; he responded that he’d never wanted to live to age 50.  Receiving the news threw me into turmoil.  I was sad because my mother did not tell me for a week after she found out because I was out of town on business and she didn’t want to disturb me, hence she had to endure the burden alone for that time.  I was angry at my brother for being so reckless, all because he wanted to die young.  Finally, I was unhappy to learn my time with him would be short after all I had gone through to reach out to him as an adult.  I did a lot of praying and soul-searching before deciding to make the most of whatever time was left.  We saw each other three more times after his diagnosis, the final time three months before his death in 1997, when my wife and I flew out to spend Valentine’s Day weekend with him, bearing our then 8 ½-month-old son.  It was the only time my child would see his uncle.  As he wished, he died six weeks shy of his 50^th birthday.  To this day, I still don’t understand that sentiment.

Conclusion

I learned in both lessons that while anticipated losses allow you to plan your goodbyes better than unanticipated ones, in the end it remains a loss.  The real lesson I learned is the importance of making the most of your time with your loved ones, for your memories will be what’s left when they’re gone, for better or worse.