After 30 years...

30 years ago yesterday my 8-year old brother, Benjamin Charles Parslow, was struck by a pick-up truck as he crossed SR-42/Main Street in Bridgewater, Virginia. Today it has been 30 years since his death. It is hard to believe that this happened and what has happened since.

Benjamin was born in February 1973 just before my 18th birthday. As Dad once said, "...he came late and left early." Although I sometimes gave him his "midnight" feedings, changed diapers, etc, we weren't all that close because for most of his life I was away in military service. I tried to connect with him. I took him shooting. Played some soccer with him (he was better at it) but having to work slowed that process.

Mom and Dad foresquarely approached their grief by often openly and fondly recounting their good memories of him. As Mom's Alzheimer's progressed she made fewer and fewer every day connections to him but she never forgot him completely. Only 1 or 2 months before she passed she mentioned to a visitor that she'd lost a son. I think that maybe such a loss is very firmly recorded indeed.

Benjamin would be 38 this year. I often look at others (including my own children) of his age group and wonder at what might have been.