In October 2009, in the span of less than a week, I experienced the greatest high point one can experience, and one of the darkest moments one can experience.  On Tuesday October 6th, I received the information that the previous night,  my brother-in-law had experienced a stroke and was now hospitalized in a coma.  That was Tuesday, on Friday October 9th, my son Spencer was born.

My father had a series of strokes fifteen years ago, and is essentially fine now, so I believed that Al would recover.  “I believe” became the theme whilst Al was in hospital.  People wrote cards and letters centred around everyone’s fervent belief that Al would recover.

As the month progressed, the information surrounding Al’s stroke brought darker and darker news.  It was explained to us that Al did not have a stroke, as the episode occurred on the brain-stem and not the brain.  The damage to Al’s brain stem was severe.  Although the odds of recovery were bleak, everyone still believed.  Al was a fighter.  He would not allow the doctor’s to be right, he would prove them wrong.

On November 1st, I received the information that Al had a second episode, and had died.  I was devastated.  Al was a vibrant man, loved by the people who knew him.  He has two children aged 12 and 7.  “How could this happen?” I asked myself repeatedly.  It was not fair, it was not right, but it was what happened.  My sister had been barely functional while Al was in hospital, now collapsed into a wreck.  Her friends and family near where she lives had come to her rescue while Al was in hospital rallied even harder to help my sister.  They did the repairs in her house, cooked her meals, cleaned her house, and took her children for “play-dates”.   My sister is a very proud woman and had difficulty allowing her friends to help her in this fashion, but knew that she needed the help.  The celebration of life was the first genuine celebration of life that I had attended.  My sister rented a hall, and was going to set up 200 chairs, but her friends convinced her to set up 300.  Reluctantly my sister agreed.  She thought 200 was more than she would need, and 300 would look excessive, especially as they would sit empty.  When I arrived at the hall, it was already standing room only.  It is estimated that 550+ people showed up to express their love for Al.  The celebration consisted of several people standing up and telling their memories of Al while they played a computer slide show of pictures.  The tone of the event was joyous tinged with great sadness.  When the event finished, everyone started back to their normal lives, everyone that is except my sister.

My sister’s life was now in shambles.  She now had to try and pick up what pieces she could, and figure out how to fill in all the holes in her life.  She had lost her husband and best friend, and her children had lost their father.  It was a gaping wound in their hearts that a little bit of counselling would not fix.  Fast forward 10 months to today – Al’s 12 year old son tries to hide his emotions in typical male fashion.  Al’s 7 year old daughter is angry at the world, but especially with her mother.  My sister is still lost.  Her emotions are still very raw.  Many days she lacks the motivation to get out of bed, and when she does get up she finds it difficult to do anything.

This morning I found a posting on her Facebook site that she had written during the night last night.  It broke my heart.  Six hours later I still have tears in my eyes.  For the first hour I wept uncontrollably.  Her son is on a Scout trip that for three years Al had been planning and preparing the scout troop.  Al always had big plans for his future.  He had written down his goals for the next twenty years of his life.  Goals that now he will now never achieve.  My sister questions how this could have happened.  Hundreds of people were praying to God for Al to recover.  We all genuinely believed that he would get better.  The quantum power of those actions should have been enough to heal Al, but he died anyway.  So what is the point to prayer or belief?  This is the question that my sister is asking.  Her heart is not broken, it is shattered with the largest piece small enough to fit through the head of a pin.

In her posting my sister quotes the Alias song “I Need You Now”.  I was left thinking about a Garth Brooks song, “Unanswered Prayers”.  In the song, Garth sings that when you pray fervently for something and God does not answer, it is likely because God has a bigger plan for you, and granting you your prayer would hinder that plan. I do not pretend to know God’s will, or even if there is a God. I sometimes question the decisions that God makes. Why does he allow certain major disasters to occur and yet prevents some of the smaller events. Or maybe there is no God and everything is random. My business partner would claim alien intervention rather than God, and perhaps he is correct.
Maybe next time I will tell you all why I believe that God made a mistake and took the wrong brother-in-law of mine. He took the hard working, decent man, father of two, Scout leader, and left behind my other brother-in-law. A man whose actions have pushed my family to near bankruptcy, and caused massive marital problems between myself and my wife. He is a narcissistic man who expects that life will hand him a silver platter. He has an attitude of expectation, and does little to nothing to help the world around him. I guess God knew which man the residents of heaven would prefer to have. Not that I really expect my other brother-in-law to go to heaven. All I know, is that if I was given the choice to trade the places of my two brother-in-laws, I would not hesitate for one second in my decision.  I know that I will get in trouble with my in-laws if any of them read this post, but I am speaking the truth, and most of my in-laws do not actually know the real story of what transpired in Calgary this year.  Or if they do know, and they still speak to me the way they do I want nothing more to do with them, ever.

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