Our Father's Namesake
(Writer's note: Fourth in a series.)
When your father is gone the boys in a family most often will figuratively circle the wagons around mom and the other women of the house. This duty is most certainly an instinct, a primal call for the male of our species. I know it happened with me at twelve years of age. I felt it so suddenly I don't think I had time to process nor truly grieve for my father's sudden death. And so it was subsequently pointed out in numerous counseling and psychotherapy sessions during my early adulthood. Another thing that happens is we younger children begin looking for father figure substitutes. For me, the baby of the family, the first person I set my sights on was the most logical- though not consciously logical- immediate and convenient source, my older brother Hal. The next oldest brother by eight years was Marty. Being that I was already twelve, he was off to college.
I also noticed that my next oldest brother happen to have the same name as my recently departed father, Harold B. Bosworth, except with a following Jr. attached. What this did for Hal, in a somewhat unfair way, was heap on him some added pressure from our mom. She would not let him forget that he was walking in tall shoes. Hal had a lot to live up to for Mom and a lot to live down to for baby brother Brad. Have you ever heard about unrealistic expectations?
These unrealistic expectations projected on my big brother have led to arguments, scuffles and periods of outright estrangement; all of which, of course, did not serve to bolster our mother's serenity. One of the biggest by-products of my getting sober eight years ago was making amends to Harold Jr. The program started a reconciliation process that reached a pinnacle this past week when he and I took a journey through our past to our very roots (See: Back to Beginings, 6/3/17). I have reflected on one of the biggest events of my life, a Mid-South Wrestling semifinal match with Kurt Robinson that- by a Miracle- I won. If you look at the picture in our senior yearbook there is Hal in the background at the edge of the mat cheering me on. He drove from Athens, Ga. to Chattanooga to see it. What more could a baby brother ask for?
Best Man
These unrealistic expectations projected on my big brother have led to arguments, scuffles and periods of outright estrangement; all of which, of course, did not serve to bolster our mother's serenity. One of the biggest by-products of my getting sober eight years ago was making amends to Harold Jr. The program started a reconciliation process that reached a pinnacle this past week when he and I took a journey through our past to our very roots (See: Back to Beginings, 6/3/17). I have reflected on one of the biggest events of my life, a Mid-South Wrestling semifinal match with Kurt Robinson that- by a Miracle- I won. If you look at the picture in our senior yearbook there is Hal in the background at the edge of the mat cheering me on. He drove from Athens, Ga. to Chattanooga to see it. What more could a baby brother ask for?
The phone call came around two o’clock in the afternoon on
August 12, 1993. I remember the time because as a route salesman for a Atlanta
beverage distributor I was up against a deadline for getting customer orders in
for next day delivery. I was paged to go to my boss Jeff Evert’s office. Jeff asked me to sit down, handed me the phone
and promptly left me alone closing the office door behind him.
When I answered the phone, it was my brother Hal on the
other end of the line. It was not until
this week that I ever stopped to consider a different context of the
devastating news he would deliver to me. For the past twenty four years I have
been processing his words, “Hey Bro. Mom and Al have had a bad car accident. Al is in the Hospital ICU and
Mom didn’t make it. They are telling us she was killed instantly. She didn’t
suffer.” I have always viewed this
traumatic life event through a self-centered lens that framed the distress and
pain that I experienced. I never tried
to understand or wondered what it must have taken for him to place that call
and deliver that news to his little brother.
It was this past week, miles and hours in a car visiting historic family
monuments and landmarks including the graves of the two people in the mangled
car. I don’t know if the tables were
turned if I could have placed that call.
In the flow of a baby brother’s natural instinct to place
unrealistic expectations on his big brother or to judge his brother’s
judgmental nature, I now have an alternative view that shifts my thinking and
once again I am grateful for the big brother I can look up to.
The home where mom was born and raised.
Amen Big Brother
Bradford Bosworth
June, 2016
1 comment:
And my experience was almost identical in that shortly after your call, my boss came into my office, sat down and told me to answer the phone. And it was you delivering the news to me in almost the same words but through your tears as you told me. She was supposed to be on the way to Atlanta to give her stamp of approval to the home Rob and I were buying.
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