My Little Brother

I remember being told of Jason’s impending arrival in 1975, I would have been 12 years old.  Being 12, I wasn’t yet the sharpest tool in the shed, but I do remember thinking…”wow, Elly is getting kind of fat all of a sudden”.  I remember the excitement of the New Year’s Baby as well, and the general euphoria of that time for our family, although to that 12 year old version of me, he was in many ways, just another brother.  Another competitor for resources, another small person to dominate and another usurper of my hard won “status” within the unit.

As I got older, and got into photography, I remember taking pictures of him and his siblings in the kitchen at the farm.  Jason especially was a great subject as he had learned how to contort his face into all kinds of wonderful, playful expressions and the camera perfectly captures the innocent beauty of children. 

I have very fond memories of the time that Jason first moved to Fergus as an adult.  Honestly, at that time, I didn’t actually know him well, as he was just becoming a sort of peer as opposed to the competitor and subject of my torture from years earlier.  I was completely absorbed in my work and family at the time, so I spent very little time thinking of anyone else.   Some may say nothing has changed in that regard, and deep down, I freely admit this is a continuing struggle of the current version of me!  Jay had some personal challenges of his own, and I remember being struck by his honesty about himself and those challenges.   He shared a number of these with me in great detail, with background information, detailed chronology of events and very specific info on every character involved.  As I compose this, I am certain there were times that I thought….”please get to the point Jay!”  Thinking back on this time, I was surprised to learn something, anything, from this young man.  You see, I already knew everything, so this quite surprised me.   I guess you could say this was a bit of awakening for me, because his honesty about himself was just one of the first lessons I got from him.

Later on, there were many other educational opportunities for me and I grew to really appreciate any time with Jay.  I remember once on what would have been his 24^th birthday, we had a really fun little outing planned for New Year’s Eve.  I had to do the math for that a couple of times because I can’t believe that was almost 20 yes ago!  You see that was the year of the new millennium and the whole world was sure all computers were going to crash, causing chaos everywhere.  Well most of us know how that turned out in the end, but Jay had this great idea to have some fun with it.  Just up the hill from my house, there was a garden beside that highway that was always taken care of by the horticultural society.  For this great occasion of the New Year 2000, they had decorated this garden with something to the effect of “Welcome Year 2000” in large shiny chrome numbers.  Well if you remember that time, you know there was all this legitimate uncertainty about what was going to happen after midnight with all the computers.  Jay’s idea was to replace the first two and zero with a one and a nine, so the sign would say “welcome year 1900”.  We spent a couple of hours making our letters out of cardboard and tinfoil, sat around drinking beer until almost midnight and then went out for the switch.  Anyone who knows the garden I am referring to, knows it is right beside the highway and another major crossing so it is always busy.  Regardless, we egged each other on until we successfully superimposed the new numbers over the old and then ran like hell!  I remember seeing it the next morning in the light of day and it wasn’t nearly as impressive as we had hoped.  I suspect only the few people responsible for cleaning it up ever noticed, but we had such fun together and laughed our asses off.

Looking back on those times, I can’t ever remember Jay having anything bad to say about anyone, even someone with whom he had some kind of conflict.  Anytime he spoke to me of any kind of challenge with a particular individual, he always made a point to try to understand the other person’s point of view.  Even if he continued to disagree with them, he chose not to judge them because he knew that everyone had their own baggage to carry, and he couldn’t possibly know what challenges they had of their own.  This was just one more of the valuable lessons I learned from him.

It wasn’t until after I had most of this composed that I came up with the title for today’s post.  As I reminisced about time we spent and things we did together, I was drawn back to a gift I rec’d from him for being a part of his wedding party.  As with most things, Jason put much thought into these gifts and even though all of the guys got the same gift, they were also very personal.  I even remember most of the story that went with the gift when he presented it to me.  I say most, partly because I can’t remember what was inscribed on some of the others gifts, and partly because I am feeling a bit selfish right now and I want to keep the details (with timelines, character descriptions etc) as my own.  I have already forgiven myself for this, I expect you will too, and only the other guys know what their gift means to them.

 

I have many other memories of many other occasions with Jay and I am eternally grateful for all of those moments with him.  I say moments because in the context of a lifetime, they were all too brief and under-appreciated at the time.

I know I am a better person for having known Jay.  His smile, wit, wisdom, sense of humour, dedication to family, humility, and even his protracted stories will stick with me for the rest of my life.  I resolve to support his legacy by doing my best to reflect these bits of his character any chance I get.  It would be understandable for anyone who loved him to feel like they have been short changed by his far too short life.  For me, these feelings are tempered by the thoughts that I had almost 43 years to know him.  Even though that is not long enough, he lived a lifetime in those 43 years, and I know he would want us to focus on and remember the great times we were fortunate to share with him.

Just another Brother indeed.

"I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long"

 Donald Fagen / Walter Becker

Love Holij