Published: August 07, 2008 03:00 pm            

Wondering where to go from here

Many readers know that my brother, Ron, died unexpectedly this week and his funeral is today. You have seen him mentioned often in my stories because unlike my sane brother, Robert, he and I couldn’t leave things in the wilds alone.

As I attempt to put some words on the screen today for the Meridian Star Outdoors page, my only thoughts are of my brother and losing him. I know it is selfish, a failing I was always asking him to help me fight, even as recently as Saturday as he lay in a Cardiac Care bed looking to be released to a room soon and from the hospital early in the week.

He and his wife, Carrol, were just completing a move to Collinsville which would be their retirement home after he finished just one more assignment with Mississippi’s United Methodist church. He was the pastor of four small churches in southwest Kemper County for just a few days. Our Meridian families were looking forward to having him and Carrol back home.

Ron and I were similarly smitten by the outdoors with its many mysteries and endless beauty, only he more fervently explored its secrets, learned them and physically took others to nature’s front row seats. He delighted in gathering groups of children and leading hikes into the wilds of southwest Mississippi where he had found waterfalls or some other destinations.



Who will call?



Now who will call me every single day just to see how I am even while he is in the middle of a 16 hour workday? Who will now listen patiently to my ramblings about adventures with my guitar? Who will witness from my side the exploits in wild places from above timberline to the marshy haunts of big bucks and mosquitoes? Who will steer me to the right when I am way off course without even a hint of disapproval?

Who will share with me his immense excitement upon discovering a rare flower or finger-size plant or a bird that wasn’t supposed to fly in from Maine but did? Who will take me for a ride to see something special in the woods and slam on brakes, threatening back injury, half a dozen times during the trip to back up and show me some other wonder of nature that I have never heard of?

With whom will I share those hundreds of priceless memories only he could savor because he was there? Who will find and haul a hundred miles all sorts of things I need to fix deer stands or roads or my tractor, thinking of my needs rather than his own? Who will insist that I threw rocks at him when we were kids, this younger brother that I grew to love far more than myself?

Who is going to drive to Georgia and haul back millions of tree seedlings to give away to Mississippians throughout many years for most of a lifetime? Who will make the wildlife happy and healthy with the fruits of millions of food-bearing trees in our woods?



Hope for a child



And who is going to lead the young abused and troubled child to find a better life by introducing him to the outdoors; the one who was giving all his leaders trouble and who rejected any constructive personal relationships? The one who refused to communicate and looked with seeming disinterest at the annual rings in a sawed section of a pine tree but hours later as he boarded a bus to return to his perilous neighborhood spoke for the first time to ask shyly if Ron would give him the piece of the pine tree to show his street friends back home?

I don’t know the answers to these questions right now. And that scares me a lot. What I know right now is that the world will long enjoy the blessings of this most unusual and generous man and the world has lost the most valuable benefactor that I was privileged to know and love.

Speaking of love, he and I were talking about the love we have for each other on Saturday while he lay in the Cardiac Care unit just one day before his untimely death. Because he was my spiritual mentor and confidant, I asked him to help me define love at this point in our lives when its manifestations should be growing and he did.

This was all in the unspoken context of explaining our mutual love, marveling at it and basking in its rewards. We were acting like two persons who go looking for a gold coin in the woods and find instead a buried treasure chest full of gold and get unreservedly giddy over it! We allowed ourselves to applaud the fruits of our love for a time, now very precious moments to me.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.