My Brother

I knew when I had that heart attack, at the end of January 2005. My brother Wayne had Cancer of the Lung and was not doing well. I had a feeling that he was going to die when my sister called to tell me he wasn't doing well on the 31st of December 2004. I knew when I talked with her that I would be going to Pittsburgh to see him; I did not know how long I would be there. I drove to Pittsburgh from Greensboro to see him one last time before he died. I set my clock for 6 am to get up and left to go to see him one last time. I got to talk with him one last time, even though he was in a coma, I knew he heard every word I said to him. I knew he did not want me to come up earlier to visit him; he did not want me to remember him that way. He would have wanted me to remember him sitting in the kitchen at the table talking to me with a cup of coffee looking at the goldfish swimming in the pond out back. The trip to Pittsburgh usually takes 8 -9 hours depending on how often I stopped. Looking back now, I realize why I had to stop so much; the extra fluid building up in my abdomen was pushing on my bladder. I made that trip in 7 hours by the grace of God who was driving. My brother peacefully died in his sleep. When I came back to Greensboro, I did a lot of crying. My back and shoulders filled with tension that ached at times and I felt stressed out. It stayed that way for a while, I did not think that it could be caused from the heart at the time. Was watching TV one evening rubbing my shoulder and felt a pop in my neck, then all the stress and tension went away.