Spirituality means different things to everyone. As long as I can remember I have dreamed things and they actually occurred just like I dreamed them. I seem to know something is going to happen before it actually does. My grandmother had the same sense.
I only had one sibling—a beautiful brother with dark wavy hair and eyes the color of the blue in the sky. He was born when I was twelve years old. I helped to take care of him and loved every minute of it. I was looking after him one day while my mother was outside hanging clothes to dry. Suddenly he started choking. My father and grandfather were both policemen and my grandfather was a Captain. We called the police and told them who we were and what was happening. Since there was no 911 in 1954, they sent a police car and took him to the hospital where he recovered. I was praying all the time because I felt responsible. We were very close.
My father called him a sissy because he did not like sports and they rarely did things together. My father was very macho. I don’t think he liked my brother.
As my brother grew up and became a teenager, I learned that he was gay. Only they did not call them gay at that period of time. This had no affect on my feelings for him. He was always my baby brother and I loved him dearly. I used to laugh and say he treated me like I was his mother.
The night my father died after having suffered a massive stroke and brain hemorrhage, my husband found my brother in a local gay bar and brought him home to be with us. He was named for my father but that was about as much alike as they had ever been. He was upset by the death and took it very hard.
Years later my brother informed us that he had been diagnosed with AIDS but did not have the virus. He contracted several medical problems, but always recovered. As his friends died, he felt guilty because he always recovered and they did not. I feel that God was looking over him.
I was able to spend a lot of time with him the last year of his life. He had lost so much weight he looked like a skeleton with skin. It hurt to see him like that.
One night after he had had a really bad day, I went to bed at his apartment because my mother and I were staying with him. As I lay on the bed, I felt a cold breeze run across my body. It lingered for just a few minutes and it was gone. It was not the air conditioner or a fan and the bedroom door was closed. Later that night something woke me and I looked up to see a dim light. In the light were my father, grandfather, grandmother, and great-grandmother looking at me. Then they were gone. All had been dead for many years but I was not afraid.
The next day was the twenty-first anniversary of my father’s death. A friend from Hospice was with us and we stood around the bed and told my brother we would miss him, that we loved him, but it was time for him to let go and join our family on the other side to alleviate his pain and suffering. I told him they were waiting for him.
A few hours later he died a quiet death and for the first time in weeks he had a smile on his face.
