It’s been ten days since my life changed forever. It still seems unreal that my brother, my last brother, my baby brother, is gone. I feel like I’m walking in a fog. I can’t look at current photos of his big smiling face without feeling as though someone was sucking the breath out of me.

After our mom died in 1987, I got all her photo albums, some from as far back as her high school days in the mid-1940s. As I lay in bed this morning thinking about Bruce (the last thing I think of at night and the first thing I think of in the morning), I wanted to find a photo of him I remembered seeing in Mom’s old albums. As I brought out the old photo albums, it struck me no one was left who would care about the photos in these albums. After both Darrell and Steve passed away, I made my nieces and nephews photo books with the dads’ photos but I’d always intended to make digital copies of many of the photos for Steve and Bruce. Other than just a photo here and there, I never did.

I know that none of my children are really interested. They humor me at times when I bring out the old photos. It seems children born during the last several decades of the 1900s aren’t interested in history. I rarely find someone of my children’s generation who is even interested in genealogy and history.

My mom was one of eight children raised on a farm about five miles from where I live. Grandma sold the farm in the mid-1970s and it has been a subdivision since that time.  After my grandparents were both gone, the brothers and sisters still got together for an annual family reunion in the summer. They took turns hosting in order of age, from the oldest to the youngest. After my mom’s brothers and sister and in-laws started passing away, their children took over the annual reunions. Over the last ten years, our reunions have become smaller and smaller with now sometimes less than twenty people attending.

This Sunday is our annual reunion, and this year, it was Mom’s family’s turn, meaning me. Bruce hadn’t usually attended the reunions because being a gay man, he didn’t feel he would be accepted by my conservative aunts and uncles. Now all the other fifteen uncles, aunts and in-laws are gone and only one 93-year-old uncle is left,. The remaining cousins (all of who are in their late 50s to late 70s) are more accepting of alternative lifestyles.

I told Bruce earlier this year that it was “our” turn to host, emphasizing “our”. I think he was going along with it. After Bruce died, I decided I did not want to host the reunion without him so I announced I was cancelling. One of my cousins asked if she could host in my place as she knew cousins were coming from out of town and there was no refund for the park pavilion. I am very grateful that my cousin offered, and although I’m not going to bring food, I’ll show up for a bit.