30 years ago I lost my older brother Brian to a loser with a gun. It still hurts more than people will ever know. Brian was only 17 and just one day away from starting his senior year in high school. He didnt live long enough to show up on Google or even get a speeding ticket, but not a day goes by that I dont think of him for something. I remember how we played Atari and how much he liked to draw. He loved hot rods and rock music and thought about joining the Army someday. I remember how cool it was that our parents let me go off with him on our own at Geauga Lake and the time he stepped in to rescue me from a bully in grade school. In my mind, hes still 17. Just frozen in time. It hurts that my younger brother Jeff and I have had to live without him and deal with the agonizing hole it created in our lives. As a journalist, I covered more than 100 murders and had to always temper my own flashbacks when watching other families deal with the heartache of a homicide. I know many, many others have also had tragedy in their lives, so Im certainly not alone. But if you havent talked to your own sibling or another relative in a while, I can only urge you to drop what youre doing and reach out, because you never know when they could suddenly be gone. Its only through my faith in God and the close friends I had around me that I made it through the dark days of Brians murder. Certainly havent done it on my own. But today I pause to just let the emotions flow because it still hurts. 30 years later, it still really, really hurts.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 10:37:13 +0000
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