Departures

Their deaths echoed the way they lived.  One spent weeks surrounded by friends and family saying goodbye to those who had touched his life. The other woke not feeling well, called a friend in the early morning light, slipped into unconsciousness in the ambulance, and died soon after, alone in a hospital room. Brothers, seven years between them, died almost a year to the day apart.  They drifted in and out of each other's lives, sometimes in conflict,  but forever bound by their childhood and need for their mother's love.  Days before my father died we called my uncle.  I held the phone to his ear.  They chatted as if all was right, as if my father's, "cheerio", was not a final goodbye.  I had just booked a flight three weeks from now to visit my uncle and bring him my father's ashes.  My timing was off.  After getting a call this morning that he was rushed to the hospital, I was barely packed when the nurse called back to say he had passed.  My father made the journey with me.  I have selfishly kept him with me since November, but now he will find another resting place beside his mother and brother overlooking the Puget sound.  Needing a break from the long and unexpected turn of the day's events, I headed out, early evening, to The Space Needle.  It was not lost on me that for all their differences, the brothers shared something significant: The day they each departed, the sunset was magnificent.