Family: "Beyond A Breath Of Life" : "That's A Lot"

 I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see.
I sought my God, but my God eluded me.
I sought my brother and I found all three.

I often get asked how I came to incorporate "Beyond A Breath Of Life" into my blogspot, my blogs, and basically my life. I'm never really prepared to answer that question so I tend to keep my answer simple and brief.  Most often my reply is the representation of my belief in eternity and the promise of everlasting life in God's Kingdom after my last breath on earth is taken.  That has truth to it, but that is not how I came to know and use the phrase that is slowly becoming a trademark in the blogs I post to this site.

When Joey came to the Bushnell house one day I could tell something was not right with him.  I knew he had been feeling sick a couple weeks before and I knew our mom helped him find a doctor he could see to find out what was wrong with him.  What I didn't know was that Joey had been back to the doctor for tests several times in the past couple of weeks.  After several tests where they looked at his lungs from every angle Joey was diagnosed with lung cancer and  this day he stopped by to tell my mom.  Joey was already at stage 3 the day he told us he was ill.  With-in 2 months of that day he was stage 4.  At the time I did not understand anything about cancer, I just knew it was never good news.  I had no idea that stage 4 meant cancer had entered both lungs and the fluid outside his lungs and had moved into his liver.  Treatment when he was stage 3 did not help and either was the aggressive treatment for stage 4.  Joey would die, and at this point all they could do was keep him comfortable for the next projected 6 months that he would live.

Family: Sibling Bonds in Life and Death

Your siblings are the only 

people in the world who know 

what it's like to have been 

brought up the way you were.  

                                                                   - Betsy Cohen




Today is National Siblings day and to be quite honest with you about it, I would not have know this if I had not seen a friends post on her Facebook page stating so.  I think its great that one woman has dedicated her life to Commemorate National Siblings Day.  Claudia Evart is the founder and director of Siblings Foundation Day.  Claudia lost two siblings in separate accidents early in her life.  She chose April 10th to honor both her brother and her sister (who was born on that date).  Claudia has no remaining siblings left walking on earth but they oversee her journey from the heavens above.

Blood Siblings:

  Jocelyn(1995-1998), Jett(1992), Jordon(1995), Joel(1982 - 2007), Jayson (1976-2000)

My heart weighs heavy daily for the loss of three of my four siblings.  Jocelyn killed in a tricycle accident at the age of 3, Joey died of lung cancer at the age of 24, and Jayson killed by a drunk driver at the age of 24.  Each death altered the dynamics of my family in heart shattering ways.  Each time a sibling died, a part of our family make-up died along with them.  The love of our mother grew and the love our 'dad' faded.  When Jocelyn died, myself and my three brothers became closer, stayed nearer to each other, and bonded tighter as siblings.  Five siblings became four, and the fear of losing another sibling made being together seem like the right thing to do.  We bonded as our family started to fall apart.

It would be less then two years later when the death of our oldest sibling would again change the dynamics of our family unit.  I was six when my sister died, and eight when Jayson died.  I was young and although those deaths were confusing to me, I was able to at least detect a change in my environment even though I never really understood where they went and how their deaths effected the rest of my family.  When Jordy left home at the age of 14, shortly after Jayson died, I figured he had gone to live with them, to get away from all the sadness and anger left behind in our Bushnell house.