Grieving

On the evening of Friday, May 5, 2023, my brother, John Wildman died. He was 71.  Every day we e-mailed each other except for once or twice a number of years ago when he’d had a heart attack and then my sister-in-law reached out to inform me and keep me posted. This is one of the few photos of my brother I have. I think he must have been in his 30s, but I don’t know.

When I was in hospital in 2009, Charles spoke to him regularly to update him on my condition.

I haven’t seen him since a visit to Brantford, Ontario in 2012 and before that I hadn’t been there since 2000.

I haven’t been close to blood family in a long time.

But John and I e-mailed each other every day and in that final week, he told me he was in hospital. My last e-mail to my brother was about the death of Gordon Lightfoot. He told me he remembered him. Lightfoot’s relatives lived near us in Wilfrid way back when.

John was 12 years older than me. I looked up to him. I pretty much always did what he said, except when he tried to teach me to play chess. I was hopeless at it. When I was little, he tried to teach me to ride a bike, but I had appendicitis and not from his scrambled eggs and shreddies breakfast. I loved the story where I had been switched with a gypsy child at 6 weeks in Yorkshire where I was born. I also liked the idea of eating grass turning me into a skeleton. And Patches the horse wasn’t a horse at all, but a cow, because I was afraid of horses. I liked it when he picked me up in his blue Plymouth Duster after school to go to the beach when I got  my little pink report card. When I was in kindergarten, John was in Grade 13, and unfortunately for him, we rode the same school bus, even though we went to different schools. Me up front or in the middle, close to the vicar’s son, who had a blond ponytail I liked to pull, and my brother in the back of the bus. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine I must have caused him some embarrassment, but he never said.

I think I inherited my love of reading from John. He used to get those thick Reader’s Digest books and I’d try to read them too. I loved the golden pages and the faux leather covers. He also had a lot of paperbacks, thrillers and other novels, and I think I read Airport and a few spy novels as well.

He bought me a blue transistor radio when I was probably around 5. I loved this radio. I didn’t so much listen to songs as I did just tune in alien frequencies. He liked the Beach Boys. My sister preferred the Beatles. I was happy to have their attention any time.

When he worked for a customs brokerage at the Toronto Airport, I got to work as a Girl Friday in one of the cargo areas. His co-workers told me to go to a terminal, which was quite far away from the cargo building, and he explained that this was just a joke, and I should take my time before I came back.

Once we cleared Dire Straits through customs, but that wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped, since it just meant we stood there with some paperwork. No Mark Knoffler in sight. He gave me a bunch of blank pads with his company stationery on it, and I think that’s the first time I started to write, using these pads. To this day, I adore office supplies.

I have other memories too, but mostly I feel sad and probably some of these memories aren’t accurate, dates, ages and places might be wrong. I was a kid. Families are often dysfunctional. Mine was no different, I expect. This is a complicated time for me. On the one hand, I know I don’t really deserve to grieve. At a certain point, I stopped taking part in family stuff, stopped visiting. Moved on. I had to do so.  But John and I kept in touch, even if all we talked about was the weather in our e-mails. We checked in with each other. Not getting his e-mails every day is weird and sad.

John had a vivid imagination and was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He had a sense of humour that I enjoyed and learned from. There were puns a plenty.

There was such a large age disparity between me and my siblings that I thought they  had some secret world of excitement that I wasn’t privy too, and I wanted to grow up as soon as possible.

I am almost 60 and one sibling is gone. Both parents are gone. I have no idea where or how my sister is. Family for me is my husband and dear friends. I am in another city. I have made new memories, safer memories. But one of the best parts of my childhood was spent with my brother, who was very dear to me. I grieve his loss. I send condolences to all who loved him.

Rest in peace, brother.