Today, one of my hometown friends posted some pictures of my brother, George, that were taken in the early 1970’s. That would make George about 21 or 22. These pictures are precious to me because they are the only ones I’ve seen of my brother during this time and you can see what a handsome fellow he is. Only a few years in the future, George would be diagnosed with jaw cancer and have one of his jaws removed. Even after corrective surgery, his face never had the softness and shape that it had originally, so that makes these photos even more important to me and, I’m sure, to his four daughters.
I loved George fiercely. He was my closest sibling in age and he and I were very good friends until the day he died at age 54 after a second bout with cancer finally won. I remember the night he called and told me about the cancer. I went upstairs, crawled into my bed and pulled the covers over my head. All I could think about was that I wasn’t going to be able to live in this world without him. I felt unhinged by that news, and yet, over the next 18 months of his dying process, I watched my brother deal with his grief with such grace that I was truly in awe. I haven’t ever known another person to approach his/her impending death with such dignity though I know that it wasn’t an easy time for him. He said to me at one moment, “Len, dying is a lonely business.” All I could say was, “Yes, I imagine it is.”
George and John Carder
I see these pictures of my brother and they take me right back to our youth together before alcohol took ahold of him and held him down to the ground until he was 36. At that point, his wife, Sandra, my mother and I sat down with him and an intervention specialist and told him that if he didn’t choose to go into rehab and get sober, then he was going to lose all of us. We were done until he chose health over illness. He looked at Sandra and his little daughter, Leslie, and said, “Where do I go?” He went to rehab and never had another sip of alcohol for the rest of his life.
John Carder, Chuck Porter, and George
I still miss my brother with a vengeance. I miss having him to talk to about life. I miss having him to laugh with. I miss having him as a support. He is definitely an example of someone who was taken far too soon, at the prime of his life, just at a time when his family needed him and he needed them back. And yet, there is no stopping death when it comes calling. This was one of those moments when all of us in his family and his close friends faced a sense of true powerlessness. Surrender was the only answer in a moment like that – accepting what can’t be changed.
John Carder and Kenny Gatlin
So, thank you, Kenny Gatlin, for posting these pictures of my beloved brother. I am so happy to have some pre-cancer photos of George to show my children. He was so handsome and full of promise in those pictures. He died full of that same promise, but only after suffering along the way. Still, he loved his daughters with all of his heart as well as his wife, Sandra. That love created a purity in him that I have rarely seen in another human being. I often think George didn’t die so much as transcend; his suffering transformed into wisdom.
Kenny Gatlin’s Aunt and George
I am happy tonight just seeing these pictures. They remind just how much I can love someone, and still do love someone, whether he’s on this earth or somewhere I can’t quite imagine. Wherever he is, part of him remains solidly in my heart and mind, and I can almost reach out and touch him. That is the mystery of death: so far away and yet so close.
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