Suffering

For those of you who have asked, my back is better but...it's been a really heavy week.

I am working...bidding commercials in Hollyweird. We have many, many budgets to go out in the next few days and I'm working long hours.

The other thing is that {Update 8/22: Better link to the story. Finally found a local newspaper.}my cousin was murdered on Monday. For days, we knew nothing more. The FBI would not release the bodies (a co-worker was killed too) or any information.

After being on the phone for days, our bits of information kept growing and growing. One other cousin was a former sheriff and could get further than we could.

Brett apparently stopped by the trailer of a co-worker and found five men beating him to death. He was stabbed to death and both bodies were wrapped in blankets and thrown in the woods. It took over 12 hours to find them. Their boss came looking for them in the afternoon and upon discovering so much blood, he called the police.

His co-worker had a long criminal record and the area is near a known drug hot spot. We think it was just a case of wrong place, wrong time.

Brett was just a few years older than me. And he has an older brother, his "Irish twin" born the same year, just eleven months earlier. Each has no memory of life without the other.

We played together constantly as kids. Their farm butted up to our grandparent's land. I would stay at their house so long, I would run out of clothes and have to wear theirs. I loved dressing like one of the boys.

I would help them with their chores around the farm which sometimes involved chasing down a chicken for Sunday dinner. After chores, we would ride a horse over to our grandmother's or fish or play. I thought those boys hung the moon.

There was something about both boys I adored. The older brother could do more with me...i.e. make me behave. It was he who escorted me down the aisle at my sister's wedding at age two. Brett was her ring bearer.

Brett was the visionary. He taught me to see things that weren't there. They had a long narrow driveway and it was full of pines. In the fall, he would rake and rake and start stacking pine straw about two feet high to build "walls" of a house. He would lay out each room carefully giving thought to where windows and doors and closets should be. Then we would play in our house which mostly meant running from room to room and giggling. And sometimes, we would re-model and add on a room.

There would come a time when I was six or so and our parents had a falling out. Their dad was my mother's oldest brother. I was so sad to drive down the road to my grandmother's and not be allowed to jump out of the car and make the run down that long driveway to see my cousins.

Then our grandmother went into a nursing home and we hardly saw the boys. Their parents died and whenever there was some family event, both would show up and pay respects or visit with family. One was rarely seen without the other.

My heart is so heavy and sad to know that he had to die this way. It can't be easy to know five men are attacking you with a knives. He deserved so much better. He certainly deserved not to suffer. And he is not suffering anymore.

His family is. His brother most certainly is.
**************************************

BITACLE.ORG steals content. JESUS GLEZ is a THIEF. If you are reading this post on BITACLE.ORG, you are supporting theft of intellectual property. This post was written and copyrighted by CREEKHIKER, who has not given consent for material to be reproduced. Please visit CREEKHIKER to enjoy this content LEGALLY.

If you want to know why this message is at the bottom of every post, read this post.