The last.
On July 18, 2024, my brother Lawrence died at the age of 51. He was probably never in good physical health for the duration of his life, but his spirit was the most sincere and positive I have ever known. He had the fortune to die of natural causes at his home. He is survived by his widow, Jennifer. My personal state has been improving.
I now find myself as the “elder” member of the family and the last of a dwindling line. It was my mom’s idea to get the immediate family together, roughly 30 years ago, for the picture included with this post. My brother is the boy in the beret in the upper left of the photo. Going counter-clockwise (the appropriate O’odham direction, by the way), the folks are: my Uncle Herman, my Aunt Margo, my Great-Aunt Ruth (my maternal grandfather’s sister), my Aunt Janice, my Uncle Jim, my Dad, and my Great-Aunt Ruth’s husband (at the time), Floyd. My mom is in the middle, and I’m just to the right of my brother in the photo.
My Uncle Herman, born 1948, and I are the only two left from the people in this photo. My Great-Aunt Ruth, despite being married six times, never had children (that is a whole other story). My Aunt Margo also never had children. My Aunt Janice had a child with her husband, my Uncle Jim, but Kathryn died immediately after being born due to in vitro development complications as a consequence, the doctor guessed, of my Uncle Jim’s exposure to Agent Orange. My brother had no children.
In order of passage from this life, the deceased seen in this photo are:
Aunt Ruth - 1914 to 1996
Uncle Jim - 1952 to 2009
Mom (Lorna) - 1948 to 2010
Floyd - 1924 to 2011
Dad (Wolf-Dieter) - 1944 to 2013
Aunt Margo - 1956 to 2019
Aunt Janice - 1949 to 2023
“Lonnie” (Lawrence) - 1973 to 2024
O’odham was the first language for five of the ten people in this group. German was the first language for my dad. My great-aunt was alive during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 that took her older older sister and two older brothers. My Uncle Jim suffered from PTSD and physical tremors from nerve damage from combat in Vietnam. Poverty and wealth were experienced by everyone in the photo, relationships were begun, grown, and occasionally died, and the reaches of the world were explored. There is history in this photo, and I am obligated, at least for the benefit of my son and, with good fortune, his children, to recall the experiences, perspectives, and beneficial values of the family with which I was lucky enough to have been blessed.
Next up will be a eulogy, of sorts, for my brother then, in the spirit of the Halloween season and to “honor” my Aunt Janice, I will recollect some “spooky” stories from our family’s experiences in O’odham Jewed over the next few days.