Windows and Doors

Seventeen years ago this past summer, my father was posthumously quoted as saying that he could do more for me in death than he could in life. It was a bittersweet moment. Naturally I was sad that he felt that way, but I was also intrigued. As a man of few words, he had long since proved to me that when he did speak about such things, it was important to not only listen, but to remember, because those few simple words would echo many times over in my life until they brought me full circle.

It began almost immediately, before I was even aware of my father's feelings on the subject. On the night he passed, my mother said, "Someone must call Denny," and I immediately found myself saying, "I'll do it."

Denny was my oldest brother, my brother from another mother, and my father's first born child. At the time of my father's death we barely knew one another. He and our father had been estranged for many years and prior to that, our contact had been sporadic at best.

The first time I met my big brother I was an eight-year-old country girl who would sit on our front porch on a summer day and count the number of cars that would drive by on a given afternoon, and he was a twenty-six-year-old executive who was newly engaged to a young lady from an upper middle class family.

Being 18 years apart in age, we had never even lived together and years before I was born, my parents and other brother had relocated to another state. We were back in Pennsylvania by the time Denny had gotten engaged and married, and I became an aunt at the ripe old age of nine! But shortly after that, he began working out of New York City, and like his father before him, work required him to relocate his family.

I remember one visit to their New Jersey home and then a move to London from where pictures were sent and then another estrangement. It wasn't until my own young adulthood that I saw him again, but the reconciliation between father and son didn't last, and the end result was that we never had the opportunity to be brother and sister.

As a child growing up in the quiet of the country, I would often look up at the sound of a jet flying overhead and think of my oldest brother. I knew he traveled for his job and I had heard enough "adult talk" that I shouldn't have to know that he had gone through his share of suffering growing up. I always felt as though a part of me was missing, but I also instinctively knew that it wouldn't be a good idea to bring the subject up with my parents. So I kept it to myself, and Elton John's 'Daniel' became one of my favorite songs.

But on the night my father passed, I was about to learn that it really is true that when the Lord closes a door, He opens a window. Just a few weeks before, I had the opportunity to order a book from my alma mater. It listed the contact information for all the graduates of the high school going back many years and my brother's address and phone number were in it.

And technically, they shouldn't have been!

Because even though he had attended the same high school I did, his mother had moved, and he didn't actually graduate from there. However, he had been well-liked, and his fellow classmates made him an "honorary graduate" in their yearbook and as a result, his information was carried over to the alumni directory.

There's that window cracking open...

Can you hear it?

I thank God every day that I did. I made the call.

It was awkward. I was grieving. I was nervous. I was a wreck.

Denny was gracious. He was grateful. He was supportive.

We now had the opportunity to get to know one another.

And we spent the past 17 years doing just that.

Time marches on, and my husband was diagnosed with cancer and I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Our son endured 13 surgeries by the time he was 11 due to a diagnosis of AVM, which, praise God, he has conquered and he is living a healthy, productive, adult life of his own now.

At the time our father passed, Denny had been divorced and remarried and he and Camise settled into their dream home at the base of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. We kept in touch by phone and their occasional trips to Pennsylvania and spoke often of the day when my husband and I would finally be able to come down and visit.

Then tragedy struck and his beautiful wife, his bride, as he still called her, suffered a serious stroke. Several years after that, Denny was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and he and Camise had to give up their dream home and move into an assisted living center.

And at the age of 69, Denny passed from this life to the next. Another door had closed.

There was still so much left to say, to do; where had the years gone? My husband had been in the hospital that week, the week that my brother had grown sicker and weaker. He was discharged on Friday and my brother passed on Saturday.

I didn't get to say goodbye!

But 25 years ago, unbeknownst to me, another window had cracked open, when Denny had introduced himself to another eight-year-old girl. She was quite different from me at that age. While I was starry eyed and impressed with my worldly big brother, she could have cared less how fancy he was or what kind of car he drove, and when he complimented her on her pretty red hair, she was even quick to correct him and tell him that it was orange!

Denny won her over, of course, because he loved her mother, and it didn't take Grace long to realize that he was the real deal. She lost her step-father at the age of 33, the same age I lost my father. And the emotion with which she spoke about him at his memorial service reflected the extraordinary bond between them, my big brother and the little girl with the orange hair.

The reception my husband and I received from my brother's family was so warm and welcoming and the rare bonds that I observed between certain individuals showed me that family is not always defined by blood alone.

Another window had been opened and it brought with it the sweetest breeze I have ever felt in a room full of people before. I believe my brother's spirit was there with us that day, just as I believe our father's spirit was there waiting for him when he first crossed over.

And while I mourned Denny's passing, I do feel I have come full circle, because when that little girl with the orange hair threw her arms around me, I felt like I had come home.

Thanks, Dad.