1970: Keith
I was in first grade in 1970. It was my first year as a full time student as kindergarten back then was a strictly half day affair. My older sister was in 2nd grade and my younger brother was doing whatever 4 year-olds did back in the early 70's. I don't have any memories when I didn't have both an older sister and a younger brother.
I do have memories before my youngest brother, Keith was born on veteran's day 1970. I remember some of kindergarten. I remember my first day of first grade and I certainly remember walking home from school that day in Mid November when my Mom was coming home from the hospital with Keith.
I also sadly have many memories of life without my baby brother. He died a little more than 14 1/2 years ago. An event that is very well chronicled on this blog. This is the fifteenth birthday we have celebrated without him.
By the time Keith was starting first grade, I was starting 7th grade. Because of the age difference we weren't all that close growing up. He started high school when I was in college living at home and volunteering in the same high school youth group I had been in while in school. He starting attending that youth group and we spent quite a bit of time together because of that. As a result we became closer and even though we weren't exactly super tight, he was probably the relative I was closest with.
In 1987, the year I left home to reinvent myself, Keith started his senior year of high school. Over Spring Break that year he had his first hospitalization due to mental illness. This was the beginning of his road to a Bi-polar diagnosis. I think back then they just called it a nervous breakdown.
That Fall he did go away to school, actually pretty close to where I had landed and he spent his first two semesters of college the farthest he ever lived away from my parents. The next year He went back home to a local junior college and started to find his own way. While there he met the woman he would eventually marry and he got married before either of his older brothers.
Keith eventually graduated from college and began graduate school but never completed it. I think the only job he ever had was at McDonalds, but he always worked hard and he always took care of his family, And I never met someone who loved his kids more fiercely than Keith did.
Some Friday night in the summer of 2006, I was at an outdoor movie night at a local park with my family. My cell phone rang, it was my Dad. Keith was sick, He had only 10 % use of his heart and his kidney function was at the same rate. Within a week, he was getting treated at the Mayo Clinic.
His kidneys were shot because of the lithium he took for his bi-polar, but we never discovered what happened with his heart. From 2006 to April 2008 Keith's life developed into a consistent pattern. He'd be hospitalized he'd then go to a nursing home (one of the only 30 somethings in the joint) then go back home far a month or two and then he'd be hospitalized again because either his heart medicine was creating problems for his kidneys or his kidney medicine was messing with the bi-polar or any other such permutation. rinse, lather, repeat.
Keith loved trivia, especially Jeopardy. He was an excellent chess player and loved all kind of puzzles especially those in Games magazine. I am sure, he would have been great at current games, like Wordle and Nerdle.
Keith died at the age of 38 so I always think of him as 38. Or I think of him at 27, when he got married. Or I think of him at 30 when his son Robert was born. Or I think of him ay 32 when his daughter Sarah arrived. Or at the age of 22 when he visited me in Russia and said of my filing system, "A place for everything and everything on the floor." Or at the age of 17 when I saw him graduate high school at the old Poplar Creek concert venue. Or playing tee ball at the age of 7 or 8. Or at the age of a few days, that November day on 1970 when he came home from the hospital. I guess I remember him a lot. I miss him even more.
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