After a rocky first year (combination of choosing the wrong major and becoming involved with his first serious girlfriend), I’m happy to say my son’s rebounded in a big way. He’s focused on his studies, enjoying his classes, and this past semester was named to the Dean’s List. Well done!
It hardly seems like it’s been almost 13 years since we watched the little boy board the bus and set off to his first day of school, and it seems like a lifetime ago.
Congratulations to my son Cameron on the occasion of his graduation from Parkland High School. You’ve made a lot of people proud, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for you.
Wednesday, February 9, 1994, 5:34 a.m. That’s when my life changed for the best. Not just better; I know my superlatives. Whatever was good in my life up until that moment was magnified, whatever was bad didn’t matter any longer.
You turn eighteen today, kiddo. You’ve made me proud. You’ve grown into an intelligent, compassionate, caring young man, a talented musician with a bright future, surrounded by family and friends who would do anything for you. And you’re way cooler than I ever was.
Enjoy your day.
Happy Birthday, young man!
Another procrastinated followup from a March post.
The final verdict on the cause of my brother’s passing was, as far as I can determine, a brain aneurysm.
The service was held at my mother’s house, since her frail health prevents her from leaving. My brother’s death broke her heart, of course, and she remained heavily sedated from just before she learned the news until after the service.
My youngest sister had flown in from California, and his ex-wives and two sets of children attended.
It was the first time I’d seen them in years. His first wife and two sons came in from Connecticut, where Terry had lived for several years. I hadn’t seen the boys, Ryan and Eric, for probably 15 years, and their mother for 20. It was quite a shock seeing them after all that time, of course. Little skinny Ryan now towers over me, and is all dreaded and tatted, and trying to carve out a niche for himself in the world of hip-hop under the name Madecipha. His second full-length is dropping soon. His younger brother Eric had some tough times (growing up without a father can do that to you), but seems to have a good head on his shoulders.
It had also been several years since I’d seen his daughters, Morgan and Rachel. They and their mother Teresa still live in the Akron area, but had still lost touch with the Bond side of the family. Both appear to be well-adjusted young ladies.
The service itself was a bit depressing, and not just because it was a funeral service. The conducting pastor was recruited for the job by Terry’s second ex-, Teresa. He had never met Terry, but was doing it for Teresa and the girls. He started out by reading the obit notice from the Akron Beacon Journal, then followed with the basic request that anyone who wanted to say some kind words or share a memory about the deceased to please do so.
Nobody came forward.
It threw the pastor off his stride. He didn’t quite know what to do, so he nervously told a few anecdotes abut his kids and implored us all to find God in some way, if not through religion, then through our own efforts…something along those lines. He was obviously making it up as he went along, since his plan of family and friends doing all the talking fell through.
The service was, obviously, pretty short.
After eating the obligatory service brunch, everyone spread out, the kids going to my sister’s house to hang out with my nephew Greg, the adults going to their respective homes – I was staying with my youngest brother, so I went back there to grab a nap before collecting Cameron from Mel’s house and visiting some friends.
Determined to keep the family spirit alive, I set up a private Facebook group, where we all are exchanging messages (although as time goes on, the messages are fewer and fewer). I went back to Akron on Mother’s Day (it was the first time we were all together for Mother’s Day in many years), and Morgan and Rachel came to my sister’s and hung out for a bit. Cameron and I are headed out there this weekend for Morgan’s graduation party. Ryan, who’s interested in MMA, is headed to Philly next month to attend a match; we’re supposed to meet up and spend some time together.
So although there was a loss, there was also a gain. Hopefully the reunion will be long-lasting.
For the last, I don’t know…say, 30 years or so, we wanted little or nothing to do with him. Some blamed the Army, because he didn’t come back from Germany in the same shape he got there. But that’s too easy; he had problems before he went in. That might be the reason he joined anyway.
An alcoholic. A barely functioning one, going through relationships and marriages, jobs, cars (wrecked and repossessed), hospitals and rehab and halfway houses, 12- and more step plans. But there was always something crossing the path of his success: a bottle of vodka. He couldn’t resist, and eventually stopped pretending to try.
After years of making excuses for him, of putting up with phone calls at three in the morning outlining outlandish plans of all of us jumping on a plane to Vegas and cleaning up with his surefire method of beating the house, of listening to rambling sales pitches for gold coins and Amway and pyramid schemes that would make us all rich, of trying to find him places to live, we – his brothers and sisters, and to an extent (at our insistence) his mother – kicked him out of our world. No more invitations to family functions; he was conspicuously absent at my niece’s wedding, which he probably didn’t even know occurred. I live out of town and don’t get back often. I can’t venture to guess when we had our last conversation. When I spoke to our other brothers and sisters, I never asked about him. They never ventured any information.
Today I happened to think back on younger days, back when we were close. We were only two years apart. When our parents divorced, he and I chose to go with my father, me because I thought it would be an adventure, he because he worshiped the ground our father walked on. For quite a few years it was us against the world, every time we moved to a new town, started a new school, we looked out for each other.
Something else I happened to remember today: he seemed to have problems with headaches for a long, long time. I recall that even when he was a preteen, he was getting tested for this and tested for that as various doctors tried to find the cause of these vicious, painful headaches. Who knows? Maybe that’s why he turned to vodka. Nothing else could ease the pain.
Late last night he visited a friend, and they started drinking. According to the friend, he started getting one of his headaches, which got worse and worse, until he was literally in tears. He began banging his head violently against the wall, as he’d done in the past. Eventually, he collapsed.
His friend rushed him to the hospital, where he was pronounced brain dead. The doctors, as far as I know, aren’t sure whether the blood in his brain was caused by the violence he inflicted on his head, or if a stroke was perhaps the cause for this particular head pain.
It doesn’t matter now.
Family members in the area were notified and all rushed to the hospital. He was on a ventilator. The doctors told them that there was nothing they could do. At approximately 3:30 this afternoon, according to wishes in his Living Will, the plug was pulled.
At 6:05 this evening, March 28, 2011, just two hours ago as I write this, my brother died. He was 57 years old.
Rest In Peace, Bro.
Random Thoughts of an American Male 