August is the saddest month
I always get a case of the blues towards the end of August. It has something to do with the days getting shorter and the nights cooler, that sense of longing for a summer that is nearly over. This seasonal melancholy is quite common, I'm told. Lots of people experience a vague sort of sadness triggered by the first hint of fall. But I love autumn; it's my favorite season. I always looked forward to the beginning of school and a new football season. Yet, for as long as I can remember, the third week in August has been accompanied by feelings of regret and loneliness. I talked to my brother Bill about these feelings once, and he said late August made him feel the same way, and he knew exactly why, "It's about Doug."
Our younger brother Doug was killed in a plane crash on Aug. 29, 1972. Doug was 21 years old when he died, and 34 years later I still feel the absence of his presence, which I had grown accustomed to after sleeping in the bed next to his every night for 18 years. Dougie was a year and ten days younger than me, and we loved and hated each other as only brothers who wake up every morning in the same room can. Our big brother, Bill, was almost a decade older. He was a distant, almost mythic figure to Doug and I. We envied and worshipped him as only little brothers can. He was our hero. And he had his own bedroom on the third floor. When Bill moved out of the house, I moved into his room.
At last a room I didn't have to share.
Last Monday morning around 8:30 my brother Bill died suddenly of a heart attack at his summer home in Beach Haven. He was 64. On Saturday around sunset we poured some of his ashes into Barnegat Bay. It was a simple dockside ceremony attended by friends and family wearing Hawaiian shirts and by noisy dive bombing seagulls with inappropriate bathroom habits. Bill would have loved it. A passing seagull almost scored a direct hit on the box containing his ashes at the moment they were dipped beneath the salt water. For a happy second or two, I forgot that for the first time in my life I am now a brother without brothers. I still have my sisters, Jan and Denise. And they still have a brother. But our tribe has melted from seven to three. And I am the last son standing.
For years and years it bugged me how Bill always treated me like his little brother. I had a family, a mortgage and a career, but Billy always made me feel like he was patting me on the head. I was almost 30 when I had it out with him and told him how unfair it was for him to treat me that way. And in the middle of my wounded righteous tirade, my big brother Bill stopped me with a single comment, which was infuriating, condescending and incontravertible. "But, Clark," he said. "You are my little brother. You'll always be my little brother. It's the natural order of things." And I laughed at the simple truth revealed. Billy would always be my big brother, no matter how much taller than him I grew. And I would always be his little brother, not matter how old I became. Oddly, perhaps, I took great comfort in that demi-epiphany. I stopped fighting the natural order of things. The same way I stopped fighting the sadness that overtakes me every August, the month that left me brotherless with a room all to myself.
Comments
Dear Clark and the DeLeon family....my cousin in North Carolina told me of the too sad and tragic news about Willie....my heart and love goes out to you all. Willies zany and loving spirit will live on in each of us....right now my brain is flooded with wonderful memories about a very special person who I had been blessed to share the New York chapter with. Polly's dock, how fitting....the memories keeping pouring in....all of them full of love....
Pam Scully
Posted by: Pam Scully | August 27, 2006 10:18 PM
Billy DeLeon was my younger cousin--my uncle's oldest son. His passing has hit me just about as hard as my brother's passing 4 years ago at age 70. Maybe it's because I remember him as a young and vital fellow, thoughtful and philosophical. I, too, shall miss him on this side of time.
Posted by: Richard F. Fleck | August 28, 2006 05:39 PM
In 1953 I came home on leave from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and stopped to see Uncle Buff & Aunt Anne at their home in Strafford. My cousin Bill who was all of 9 followed me around asking tons of question about the Navy, aircraft carriers and what the badge and stripes on my sleeve meant. Damn if he didn't join the navy a few years later, serve on the USS Wasp and became an Aviation Ordnanceman as I was. Then later it was going to Hawks basketball games, Dirty Frank's, a bar in Narberth (I forget the name) and a memorable trip to his Beach Haven house to play bridge with Aunt Anne, Uncle Bill Schmidt (Bill's namesake) and be called a "quitter" because I stopped drinking and went to bed at 3 AM. To me, Bill was friendship, caring, joie de vivre, and just plain fun. Like his friends and family, I will miss him very much. Heartfelt wishes to all that the pain of this loss will ease, especially Maureen, Jan, Denise and Clark, Tom, Stu and Sarah and his nieces.
george fleck
Posted by: george fleck | August 28, 2006 06:12 PM
Sad...Sad...Sad Three cousins all younger than George and I.. to leave us Dougie first...the John (Pete) Fleck and now Billy DeLeon. Bittersweet memories and regrets we haven't seen each other without years passing by.
Love and peace to all the DeLeon clan!
Posted by: Jack Fleck | August 28, 2006 06:59 PM
Dear Clark, I'm so sorry for yours and Denise's loss. I lit a candle - St. Martin "El Caballero" for Billy, to help guide him on his journey. I keep thinking back on all those beautiful luminarias at the beach house and can't help but wonder if they were all for him. From our family to yours, peace and may God bless you all.
Cia
Posted by: Cia Salanger | August 29, 2006 12:30 AM
Dear Clark, You are so right about August being a sad Month. The Loss of Billy and now Joy is very hard to bear. What has really struck me this past week is we are "the Generation". We are the ones to tow the line for our kids and the grand kids. We are our parents.
Today my miracle is finding this site and a way to connect with my extended family. My heart and arms go out to the Deleons and the Fitzpatricks.
Lisa
Posted by: Lisa Schmidt Boiani | August 29, 2006 12:30 PM
One More Thing for Bill
After Bill's mom (Aunt Anne) passed on in 1999, I wrote a poem about her death and told Bill I would pass it on to him when finished . Don't think Bill was into poetry but he smiled and said he'd look forward to it. As you all well know, to speak or write about the loss of someone is difficult, and even more so if they were close to you, I fiddled and fussed with the poem trying to get it right, off and on for more than seven years. Was thinking about mailing it to just before the news came. So Bill, here it is, warts and all.
George
Aunt Anne’s Things
(for Bill DeLeon)
A queen-size bed waits at home,
Its maple posts worn to honeyed tan.
A silver-backed brush waits for a comb,
and the touch of its owner’s hand.
The mahogany dresser is dusted gray.
Underneath, a tattered cat’s toy,
Perfume bottles on a mirrored tray,
hold remnants of Chanel and Joy.
A small red leather missal
whose worn gilt pages
contain words and rituals
passed down through the ages.
A wedding picture in black and white,
a couple for forty-two years
still framed in silvery light
that fades as evening nears
An upright piano with eighty-eight keys,
its sounding board splitting apart.
A touch on the yellowed ivories
And felt hammers fall on my heart.
Posted by: george fleck | August 29, 2006 01:13 PM
George,
"Felt hammers. . ." Brilliant. Our family has felt hammers from the moment we were born. My mom was a felt hammer throughout her life. Softly striking the note she wanted me to play until my resistence provided the chord. What a beautiful sound we made.
Clark
Posted by: clark deleon | August 29, 2006 07:05 PM
Dear Clark,
You are a good friend and the loss of your brother Billy touches me deeply. I have an older brother Billy, now serving now in Afghanistan, and your words descibing how brothers have loved and hated each other strikes an ancient chord. Comparisons of our brothers would of course find differences,
but the bonds of brotherhood seem universal.
Your brother's death diminishes me because I feel your loss to my bones.
Older and younger brothers,
if they are close enough to each other, fight each other for what they want. My brother hated when I would wear his clothes or play his records, (on his stereo), or try to horn in on his friends, or tell Mom
on him, or follow him when he was trying to loose me.
He was three years older, and back then three years seemed like ten years.
The natural order of brothers, older then younger, I think is hardest for the younger to accept.
I say this because I am the younger.
Billy would probably beg to differ.
Fraternity, Semper Fidelis,
Chris Dwyer
Posted by: Chris Dwyer | September 1, 2006 03:17 PM