Brother Richard

Brother Richard

I've already told the story of my early life, how losing not one but two fathers has affected me (see blog entries - January, 2009). So now sit back and you will hear another chapter of this tale............

Having lost my beloved fathers, I entered my teen years with a suppressed sadness within my heart. I never spoke about the losses, yet they defined me. The shock of the losses that I felt actually deepened with time. I guess looking through the prism of today, this is understandable. I never had any kind of grief counseling. That kind of thing just wasn't heard of in the 60's. It might have helped, but I suspect I would have had a rough road anyway. Add to the loss of my fathers, the entrance of a third man in my life - my step-father Robert. I wasn't exactly in competition with him for my mother's affections, but there was a definite change in the culture of our house. It became Robert-centric! While I did come to care for Robert, to say that we clashed was an understatement. He used to tell me he couldn't wait until I turned eighteen, that he wouldn't let the door hit me in the ass on the way out. That was kind of a new concept for me - here was this interloper laying claim to MY house. In my heart I knew I would always be welcomed by my mother, but the fact that he threatened me with loss of the most important things in my life - my mother, my brother, my home - well, let's just say my sense of security was shaken. Of course Robert didn't kick me out of the house the day I turned eighteen, but I made it easy for him. I got engaged at eighteen, and left home to be married a month before my twentieth birthday.

In November of 1970, I was eighteen, I was in a committed relationship with Mike Sullivan, I was away at college in Dekalb, and I got a call from my mother that my Aunt Ina had passed away. Aunt Ina had been one of my dad's sisters. She was the matriarch of this generation of the Wakefield family. It was to her house that we went for Thanksgiving, for a few years anyway. I have a handful of memories of those wonderful gatherings, getting to know my Wakefield cousins a little, feeling like a part of something bigger than myself. At eighteen I was just beginning to recognize the 'losses' and felt terribly about Aunt Ina. It's one thing to know someone as a child. But I was just reaching the point of establishing more adult relationships with these people and the chance of doing that with Ina was now lost. My mom asked me if I wanted to attend the wake and of course I did. Walking in to the room, not having seen my relatives for a few years - I think they were surprised at how time had flown, that I was now a different Dawn. Uncle Ralph in particular was taken aback. I felt it in his embrace, I saw it in his eyes. Uncle Ralph had been the one of my dad's nine siblings closest in age to him. He's the one of whom my memories are most vivid. After my dad died, my time with the Wakefields was numbered - i.e., I could count them on one hand. (Another thing that led to my insecurity - why did they abandon me?) Anyway, Aunt Ina's death was another of those count-on-one hand markers of my life as a Wakefield.

Fast forward to 1988. I am now a wife and mother. I have now embraced the heartbreaks of my childhood. To fill the void, I have begun the hobby of genealogy. I reach out to Uncle Ralph, now retired and living in Henderson, Nevada. We got to know each other through the exchange of lengthy letters. I asked him a lot of questions, he shared a lot with me. He was an amazing man - a master carpenter, he fashioned a guest room of his house to look like the captain's quarters of a ship. He drove his truck out into the Nevada desert, selecting rocks for color and size, and brought them back to create a stone wall around his house. He played guitar, he wrote poetry, he was a horseman. Well, maybe more of a cowboy than a horseman! He was a singing cowboy/poet of a man. He was just such a delightful human being. As we got to know each other, the 'loss' we both felt became so apparent. He apologized to me for being absent - he felt he needed to step away when my mother remarried my step-father Roy. That's perfectly understandable.

In one of his letters, Uncle Ralph sent me a poem he had written in 1970. He wrote it the day after Ina's wake. (He held on to it for almost twenty years without sharing it with me.) The beauty of it, the love in it, is stunning. It affected me so. I had to try to immortalize it in my own way, so I created a version of it in embroidery. I sent it to Uncle Ralph as a gift. I believe he was touched by it. Aunt Val was kind enough to return it to me after Ralph died. Here it is:

BROTHER RICHARD

I'm thinking of someone good and kind
Who lives within my secret mind
This person was no God or king,
no brilliant scholar, no such thing
What he wasn't doesn't count
It's what he was that really mounts
He was a citizen, and a man
husband, father, soldier, and
a clean and upright, outbound guy
whose honor no one could deny
His life was short, one score and six,
but filled with bravery and love mixed
He's gone but never far from me
because of what he meant to me
Though he's been gone these many years
his memory still can bring me tears
I saw his baby yesterday
a grown up girl in every way
With that same love I used to see
It's like he sent her here to me
I didn't want to interfere
but it's good to know she's well and near
Because I feel he lives in her
and through her he can get his share
Because his wish for her of all,
that she be pretty, proud and tall.
He wished her love, good life and fun
To see her I would say he won!



Ralph D. Wakefield
1970