Last Earthly Encounter

The writing below is in part a combination of a trip journal I kept during my move out to Oregon and my best recollection of the last bit of present life I shared with my little brother before his passing on 11.15.12. I had previously written an account of that morning with him in an earlier blog but only recently remembered that I kept fairly detailed notes about those last moments with him in my journal. Here it is, just a little reworked so it's not so choppy:



5.26.11

5:45 a.m. alarm, awake, change, wash hair. Seth made a great batch of coffee, poured a cup. I said bye to beautiful, lovely, sweet, and cute Sunshine...then grabbed the rest of my bags. Seth and I drove to Grandma and Grandpa Bair's house and from there we went to the train station. We made it to the station at about 7:20. The train was scheduled to arrive at 7:29 a.m. Well that didn't happen, it was very late, we boarded around 12:20 p.m. (There had been a lot of flooding throughout a large portion of the eastern and western U.S. which caused serious delays. We weren't quite aware of the issues at the time other than the delay being weather related.)

While the grandparents and I waited for our ride, Seth and I hung out till he had to leave to work with uncle Tommy. We stood out on the red brick platform and watched the freight trains roll on by. We talked about the graffiti on the cars, the good works and the less than. We talked about the nearly overflowing cars full of coal that one engine was hauling, where it had been mined, and how sucky that kind of job would be. We commented on how neat the Elkhart train station is with its arches and antique appeal, and about how long it was taking my train to arrive. We watched the lone engines roll by, in near silence compared to the squealing and clanging of the long and heavily loaded transporters. We just enjoyed being with each other for what time we had. Right before he had to leave, Seth pulled out a wad of cash, somewhere around $200, and as he did, he said he wanted to give it to me since I was traveling so far away. He said I could use it as snack money for the trip. I gave him a look like, 'I can't take that'. Then with a Seth kind of silliness, he shouted, "take it in a good brotherly love way". While he said that, he also slipped the money into my pocket.

Sharing smiles, I let out a giggle at the comment 'snack money', how funny. We hugged a good long hug that just about brought us to tears. I don't know why I held it in. He said he was really going to miss me but that he was really happy for me. He said he could never just up and move that far. The thought clearly discomforted him. We walked back into the station where Seth said bye to grandma and grandpa. I walked with him to the door and wished he could have stayed longer, uncle Tommy would have understood. We hugged and I asked if he really couldn't stay longer. He had to go. We said "I love you" so many times...and I watched him drive off in my beat up car with a bumper sticker that read "Princess" in fancy glittery font.

...
I missed a call from Seth sometime after I had boarded the train. I went to the lounge car that now overlooked parts of Gary or industrial Chicago and call him back. He had called me earlier because he had seen an Amtrak train go by while he was waiting at a crossing on his way to our uncles. He was amazed and wanted to know if it was my train. We figured out the time lapse and discovered that it really was my train that he had seen passing by. After talking about the long delay I had and how crazy it was that he had seen my train leave I talked about what it was like on the train, where I guesstimated I was, and the emotions that rise up when someone moves. We talked about Shoshies move and how hard it was for her compared to my move. She had little money, she drove, she didn't know anyone there, and didn't have a job set up. I had a part time job set up and enough money to get me by for a while at least. Seth said he was really going to miss me and that the house was feeling really lonely. He said that he wanted to cry when we said goodbye to each other and that he did cry when he drove off. I cried when he said that. He told me not to tell anyone that he was crying. I agreed and said that it would be stupid to do so.