Dear Doug,
How are you? That seems a silly question to someone who has been gone for so long. However, that’s how I learned to start a letter and I haven’t found a better opening line.
I’ve been thinking about you the last few days. This month I dedicate my writing to Epilepsy. There’s an Epilepsy Awareness day annually on March 26. I’ve been writing for several years now and each day in March, I write a blog entry. I don’t suppose you know about the electronic world of email and blogging, having left us in 1992 before the world of computers was fully engaged. I’ll just say that many things have changed in the communication world.
I have few memories of you, and the earliest remaining one is not the best. You may not even remember it. It was the day you had your first seizure one Christmas morning when you were sixteen and I was about ten. They call them ‘tonic/clonic’ seizures now. It’s more clinically accurate apparently. Few other memories have survived over the years. Mom spending time with you at the dining room table helping you with your French. Arguments with dad that were a bit loud. And stories from school about misadventures that you experienced, that today would be called being bullied.
So we didn’t know each other very well then. I was just one more sister. We knew each other more as adults when my kids, your nephews, were in their early adolescence. By that time, I also had had epilepsy for about ten years.
We would visit either in my kitchen, or the back yard in the summer. In the winter it was in a coffee shop or in the cab of your old green truck. You were the first one that I could really talk to about epilepsy. I did get all nurse-y on you about how and when to take your pills, and was most shocked to learn that you didn’t even know the names of your pills. After thirty-five years, you still just didn’t seem to get it. I tried to tell you at the time even though I was still figuring it out for myself.
You came from a generation that didn’t talk much about health conditions. You just went to the doctor when there were problems. What I did learn from you, was what not to do. So thank you for the talks that we did have about life, whether epilepsy was involved or not.
The rest of the family is all doing well. Your sisters and brothers have given you lots of talented nieces and nephews, and several grand nephews and nieces, the youngest grand nephew not even a month old.
It was nice talking with you again.
Love,
Susan
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing
new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
~ John Maynard Keyes
Author's note: edited July 25, 2024
1 comment:
How does one comment on this? In my silly old ways, I believe if you found yourself talking to Doug, then he found your spirit and was talking to you, and maybe thanking you for some of those talks in your back yard. I also remember that first seizure, I remember kneeling over him, and calling out for him to speak to me. Dad and mum, still upstairs, came rushing down, and fortunately Dad knew what to do to help keep him from being injured until the seizure was over. It was a scary morning for everyone, most of all Doug.
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