My oldest brother-in-law past away yesterday.
My first memories of him where when he started coming home for supper with my sister. I was still very young and in 1st or 2nd grade. For the 1st supper my mother made an apple pie. The crust was rock hard and my brother-in-law wanting to impress my parents ate all his piece with difficulty proclaiming it was good.
My mother was ashamed. It would become the motivation for her to improve her pie crust, which was normally flakey and just right in the later years of her life.
My sister married him the summer after she graduated from high school. They have been together ever since.
He was the one who taught me how to catch a baseball, in the front yard of the house my father had just built. It still stands, but recently had a major overhaul. He would put me near our neighbors yard so when I missed the ball it would go in their yard. The neighbor identified her property with a flimsy fence and attempted bushes that never grew. She guarded her yard and discouraged any intrusion such as a ball going into her yard. He would position me so that the inevitable stray ball would eventually invade her property. My brother-in-law enjoyed getting her riled up.
My brother-in-law served in the Navy as a SeaBee, He delivered Cushman bread back when milk and bread routes brought product directly to the home. They moved to Pittsburgh area where he grew up and he worked in steel mills, worked as a manager at Montgomery Ward, but his true love was construction. He eventual got a job as a supervisor of construction for a county school district.
He had a full workshop and his carpentry skills were very good. They built a log cabin together and made a home.
And then he had a stroke.
He had struggled for most of his elderly life. He had a massive stroke / brain bleed over 25 years ago.
While he recovered from the stroke, he was never the vibrant man of his youth. His mind was still sharp, but he was never able to work in his workshop again. He has had limited use of one side of his body.
I remember conversations we had about politics. While we didn’t always agree they were always civil. There was a time people could talk about their differences and not argue. He looked forward to those times. When I would visit he would call me his “bud”
He and my sister have lived in assisted living for quite some time. I would visit them when I traveled between my home and my mother’s.
He has suffered with Alzheimer’s for a few years with it came the understandable difficulty to participate in conversations. While, he did seem to recognize me and was glad to see me, but he had difficulty speaking in full sentences.
He contracted COVID about 2-3 weeks ago, and now is gone.
I’ll miss him.
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