I was reading through some older posts on a friend's blog, and came across a post where she spoke of the son she lost as an infant. It reminded me of the brother I never knew, the one who might have survived had a doctor not been reluctant to wield a scalpel to assist him into the world. I haven't thought of him in years, even though my parents acknowledged the loss and told my brothers and me about him. He was always part of our night prayers, the "God blesses", as we called them.
"God bless Mommy and Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa, Oma and Opa, Anna Catherine, Neil John," etc.
Neil John. That was his name, an Anglicization of the historically Latin names that are so much a part of my father's traditional Dutch Catholic family tree. Cornelius Johannus, he would have been to a previous generation.
When I was a very young child, he was my constant companion, even more so than any of my living brothers, who were so very different in their interests from me. Neil, as I pictured him, was just as bookish, maybe a bit less socially awkward, than I was. When I became a target for bullies in elementary school, I always imagined that he would have been my defender, or at least been the one to share my isolation. Physically awkward kids with borderline genius IQs generally don't fit in well in small rural schools, particularly if they have no gift for dissemblance, and I suffered the additional burdens of being the only girl in the grade and the only one who had not attended kindergarten (back when it was optional).
It's odd. Back then, I pictured Neil as close to my age, even though he would have been sixteen months younger than I, and given the arbitrary nature of school age cut-offs, two grades behind. Now, when I try to remember what he looked like, I get two images, primarily, one overlying the other. The first is of a blond toddler with our father's curly hair, the hair that none of the rest of us inherited, but which skipped a generation to show up in one of my daughters. The other image is of a faceless young man, somewhere between twenty and thirty-five, in some sort of military uniform.
Somehow he reminds me of the photos I have seen of "Bobby", one of my mother's cousins who was lost, albeit in a different way. Bobby was R.C.A.F. during the Second World War, and is still, to the best of my knowledge, listed as "missing in action". Neither his body nor his aircraft were ever found. There is only one photo that I have ever seen of him, taken just before he went overseas, somewhere around late 1942 or early 1943. The only reason I can date the photo is that in it, he is holding his cousin, my mother, in his arms, and she appears to be about two years old. Since she was born late in 1940, and she is not bundled up to the eyes against a Calgary winter, I would be inclined to say spring or summer of 1943. I digress. Regardless of the date, he is lost in another way, but still somehow manages to visit my memory from time to time, particularly around Remembrance Day, one of four cousins who served, and the only one who did not make it home. His cousin, David, was lost for a time, too, as a POW in the notorious Stalag Luft camps. Although David's breathing body made it home, I think part of his spirit, too, was lost somewhere in Europe. Whenever I met him, I got the impression that the connection between his spirit and his body was tenuous, as though he lived his life with one foot beyond the veil.
Maybe it's the time of year, that season when so many cultures celebrate the lives of those who are gone, when the Celts believed that the veil between the living and the lost thinned enough to allow contact, combined with my Scottish ancestry and a genetic connection to the weird. Maybe.... There are so many other reasons that I could feel this connection, not least what my parents and teachers insisted was an "overactive imagination". Or maybe it's that Odin's ravens sit on my shoulders, whispering their knowledge into my ears. How else could I remember people I have never met, and who were barely known by those I knew who had met them? Who knows? There are many ways of knowing. From here, I could go on a half-formed, half-thought-out rant about North American culture and the downfall of Western civilisation, but I'm not ready to put on the tinfoil hat just yet.
I'm just grateful for the Internet, which allows me to reconnect with long-lost friends, to read through their past letters to the world, and to connect my friend's lost son with my lost baby brother. Who knows, perhaps I have introduced two lost children to each other, facilitating a network on the other side of the veil.
Neil, meet Finn. Finn, this is my brother, Neil. Look out for each other. And watch for me when it's my turn to rejoin you.
Somehow he reminds me of the photos I have seen of "Bobby", one of my mother's cousins who was lost, albeit in a different way. Bobby was R.C.A.F. during the Second World War, and is still, to the best of my knowledge, listed as "missing in action". Neither his body nor his aircraft were ever found. There is only one photo that I have ever seen of him, taken just before he went overseas, somewhere around late 1942 or early 1943. The only reason I can date the photo is that in it, he is holding his cousin, my mother, in his arms, and she appears to be about two years old. Since she was born late in 1940, and she is not bundled up to the eyes against a Calgary winter, I would be inclined to say spring or summer of 1943. I digress. Regardless of the date, he is lost in another way, but still somehow manages to visit my memory from time to time, particularly around Remembrance Day, one of four cousins who served, and the only one who did not make it home. His cousin, David, was lost for a time, too, as a POW in the notorious Stalag Luft camps. Although David's breathing body made it home, I think part of his spirit, too, was lost somewhere in Europe. Whenever I met him, I got the impression that the connection between his spirit and his body was tenuous, as though he lived his life with one foot beyond the veil.
Maybe it's the time of year, that season when so many cultures celebrate the lives of those who are gone, when the Celts believed that the veil between the living and the lost thinned enough to allow contact, combined with my Scottish ancestry and a genetic connection to the weird. Maybe.... There are so many other reasons that I could feel this connection, not least what my parents and teachers insisted was an "overactive imagination". Or maybe it's that Odin's ravens sit on my shoulders, whispering their knowledge into my ears. How else could I remember people I have never met, and who were barely known by those I knew who had met them? Who knows? There are many ways of knowing. From here, I could go on a half-formed, half-thought-out rant about North American culture and the downfall of Western civilisation, but I'm not ready to put on the tinfoil hat just yet.
I'm just grateful for the Internet, which allows me to reconnect with long-lost friends, to read through their past letters to the world, and to connect my friend's lost son with my lost baby brother. Who knows, perhaps I have introduced two lost children to each other, facilitating a network on the other side of the veil.
Neil, meet Finn. Finn, this is my brother, Neil. Look out for each other. And watch for me when it's my turn to rejoin you.
