Women have asked for equall rights. In a day and age when we can
decide when and if to have children, it's time, we, women take more of the
financial responsibility for our children. Child support and spousal
support equate to nothing more than sanctioned welfare. Step-parents
have no legal rights after the death of the birth-parent. Children are
being taken out of loving homes because of nothing more than genetics.
The laws must be changed. Perhaps we can work together to change these
antiquated, and immoral laws, before someone you loves dies.
There are so many things I want to tell you about my brother, about the courage
the man had. He went to Viet Nam, and didn’t tell his family, because he didn’t want us to
worry. He got lucky, and made it out alive, after a short tour when he got a skin infection
and the Army sent him to Germany.
He drove truck for twenty-seven years. In those twenty-seven years, he stopped at
all accidents to render help. At Thanksgiving, when I was returning home, I knew his time was
short. I stopped to walk my dog, and started talking to a lady truck driver. I told her that
my brother was a truck driver, but he was dying of cancer. When I told her his name, she
said he pulled her out of an accident in which every bone, in her body, except for two was
broken. She said her blue jeans were red from the blood. J.T. held her and stayed with her,
comforting her, until the paramedics arrived. He told her "You’re not going to die on me."
He went to visit her when she was in the hospital. Her handle was Jellybean. She sent him a
message and when I asked him if he remembered her he said "No. I’ve pulled so many people out
of accidents". That was the kind of man my brother was. He once told me of a $28.00 911
cellular phone call where he stayed on the phone waiting for paramedics. He said it didn’t
matter because otherwise the people would have died. He worried sometimes about the blood and
contracting AIDS but even that didn’t deter him from rendering first aid.
He survived many things. He was hit by a train in his eighteen wheeler. He was
catapulted thirty feet when a chain let go, and the tie-down bar flung him from his truck.
He survived melanoma, and asked that God give him ten more years, so he could see that his
children could grow up. He survived the colon cancer three and a half years. In those ways
he led a charmed life. Yet in so many ways he was deprived. He was three months old when
his father died. His stepfather, my father was an abusive man, who hated him. We lived in
poverty. He was never given an opportunity to enjoy growing up, learning to play a musical
instrument, or an education. They say a mind is a terrible thing to waste. He had an I.Q.
of 165. I say a life is a terrible thing to waste.
He never knew happiness until he met Corina. She never knew happiness until she met
J.T. When he was dying she took care of him. She was there in the nights when the pain got
unbarable. She bathed him and changed his colostomy bag. They laughed together, and they
cried together. And in the end he told her "Turn on the light Baby, I want to see where I
am going". He kissed her, he told her he loved her, asked for his "barf bucket",
(in the end he was sick all the time), then he told her "I’ve got to rest now", and simply
went to his ever lasting sleep. He was going to be baptized that day, but instead he was
taken into the loving arms of Jesus. To suffer no more. To watch over those of us who love him.
