1/21/13: President Obama's Inauguration Day and the four year anniversary of my brother's death [View all]

[Amerigo Vespucci]

On President Obama's first Inauguration Day, I posted the news of my brother's death on DU. He had a massive heart attack behind the wheel of his car while driving in Wakefield, MA...3000 miles away. He slammed into some parked cars the coroner / medical examiner ruled that he was dead before impact. He had a sad, messed up life. He never was able to make all of the pieces of his life puzzle fit together.

I just posted the following on my Facebook page and thought I would share it with you.

Jonathan Capehart from MSNBC just posted on his Facebook page that it's Inauguration Eve. What I remember from President Obama's first Inauguration Day is that my brother Terry died behind the wheel of his car 3000 miles away. All my life I've had this feeling that I had a brother, but didn't have a brother. Terry never had much use for me...if my name ever came up in conversation he dismissed me with a few well-chosen words that I won't repeat here. I never really tried to be a brother to him, either...we were from a classic dysfunctional family and we lived our lives in two radically different worlds. But on the day of his passing, I choose to remember him for his best, for the good in him. I wish things could have been different, but they weren't. I wish he could have had a happier life, but he didn't. I'm a Christian but I'm not 100% sold on the concept of heaven. I don't have a deep, unshakable belief in "where we go when we die." My answer is "I don't know," and that angers a lot of my fellow Christians, but anyone who knows me knows I don't care. Wherever my brother Terry is tomorrow, if I could say anything to him and have an assurance that he would hear it, I would say "I'm a better person than you gave me credit for, I wish I could have been a true brother to you, but even though that never happened, I honor your memory and mourn the loss that happened four years ago. I hope that wherever you are the pain and conflict and turmoil and confusion that marked your life on this Earth are a thing of the past and it is nothing but blue skies as far as you can see."