Stephen John Harrison

Stephen John Harrison

July 10, 1951  -  December 29, 2015

 

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die;

Early this morning it was my brother’s time to die. He went out for a walk in the snow to the corner store and then to look at a construction site where he had a massive heart attack and although there was a valiant effort to resuscitate him, he didn’t pull through. I received the call around 2:00 AM that he was in the hospital and by 2:30 he was gone.

I guess I have been in shock because I haven’t been able to sleep since hearing the news. His wife seems to be taking Steve’s death much better than I am. Like everyone that loses a loved one I am thinking of all the times that stand out in my mind about my brother. Good and bad.

Steve was my older brother, the person that I looked up to while I was growing up. I suppose that I wanted to be just like him but that wasn’t really in the plan. I don’t know whether it is because I needed to be different or I knew I could never compete with him on many levels, but we grew up quite different people. He left home when I was 14 or 15 and from that point on we would only cross paths infrequently. Our life choices dictated that we would never meet socially and even when I lived with him the last year of high school, we were more strangers than family.

Years have passed and we both aged. I had a family which took up a good deal of my time and Steve was content with being an absentee uncle. We both had careers, me in the Post Office and Steve worked as a carpenter in the movie industry. There were years when we only communicated through our parents. Neither of us felt a loss.

When dad died, we came together and then again when mom passed away, all we had was each other. Since then, we have been getting closer and closer. I think that both of us mellowed over the years and whatever slights there may have been between us were forgotten. For the past three years of so, Steve and I have been Skypeing and phoning each other on a weekly basis at least. We would talk of our lives and belly laugh at some of the most ridiculous things. We both had a similar sense of humour, a little on the twisted side.

After today, I am alone, the last surviving member from 7 Dalecliff Cres. I hope that I survive for many more years, but when your brother passes, you can see your own mortality.

I wish I had been a better brother. I wish he had been a better brother. I wish we had shared more laughs over the years. I wish we could have been one of those “close” families. I wish Steve had had children so that I could watch them grow into men just like he was. I wish that my memories of my brother won’t fade, but I know they will. I wish that there is a heaven and he can be happy and content just being himself.

I am the person that I am in a large part because Steve was who he was. He was my big brother and I have always looked up to him and probably always will.

I am going to miss you Steve.