A Eulogy

Last week I went to the funeral of my late husband’s last surviving brother. He was 92. There were 16 years between them, my husband being the baby of the family. Howard, the brother and the oldest, was more like a father to my Jim than a sibling. Jim loved to tell of spontaneous fishing trips, secret candy bars, and surreptitiously-given dollar bills that passed between them as he was growing up. I grew up as an only child so I never knew the deep roots of the sibling bond, making Jim’s and Howard’s relationship of a particular interest to me, almost something foreign. The sibling relationship has to be life’s longest-lasting relationship, longer even than our ties to our parents or our spouses.

I’m positive Jim would say Howard was one of his best teachers, a staunch protector, and a stand-in caretaker, all leading to an indestructible closeness later in life. Howard and Jim grew up in Beckley, West Virginia, with six other siblings. Their father built houses for a local coal company and their mother, like most others, was a stay-at-home mom. When Howard and his family moved away, the second oldest brother, Jack, stepped in to fill the vacancy, but the bond was never quite as deep as that between Jim and Howard. Even though most direct interaction between them ceased, Howard’s existence mattered just the same.

I met Jim when he was in the Air Force stationed in Dover, Delaware, my home State. We married in 1963 and lived as a family in Delaware for sixteen years. After my mom died in 1975, we talked off and on about moving to Florida where Howard and his family had lived for several years, and finally, in 1979, we followed Howard to Gainesville. I had met Howard a few times at family reunions and funerals, but most of my knowledge came second-hand through Jim. I had little to fear ahead of our move because I knew we had a protector paving our way, and that is exactly how things turned out. All of our moving questions passed through Howard first, and we took his advice seriously.

After we were settled in Gainesville, Howard and Betty became our first best friends. We went to church together, socialized together, and each family lent a hand whenever the other needed help. In the beginning that was somewhat one-sided, but soon the playing field leveled out, and we were on an equal footing with each other.

As I sat at the funeral last week, I thought of all we had shared, the card games, the Christmases, the family dinners, the church excursions, the fishing trips, the rides to Cedar Key for dinners, the pizza night get-togethers at Godfathers, the doctors’ appointments, the Gator games, the horseshoe pitching contests, the blueberry picking, and just sitting around, drinking coffee and talking, such wonderful times in retrospect, but such ordinary times as they were happening.

As my eyes rested on the casket, I thought of all these things and of their early lives in West Virginia. What had they dreamed of doing with their adult lives? Had they turned out as they had hoped? We all have our own memories, but we seldom think of the hopes and dreams of our loved ones during their younger years. I remember Jim once saying he had wanted to be an engineer and live in Brazil. Where did that come from? I wonder what Howard dreamed of? Somehow, sometimes we forget our dreams when we reach that magic age of adulthood with all its pull and push. But in the end, it’s best to be satisfied, cherish our memories and make some more if time allows. Although Howard and Betty moved to Winter Haven several years ago to be near their children, it’s like I said earlier, just their existence mattered most.