Could Have, Would Have, Should Have

My oldest brother passed last week. At the service a slide show of events of his life stirred a bunch of memories in me. Six years difference in age is nothing when your seventy, but for an eight year old, he was a giant. He was a star baseball player and I loved shagging balls he hit into the pasture near our home. I think he paid me a penny a ball. I had to run till my tongue was dragging. He left me stand around when his friends would came over for a nickel poker games. Thats how I learned to play poker.(I never did learn how to win). When he ran track, I was proud to take his warm-ups at the starting line and then run like crazy to get to the finish line before he did. He let me go along when he and his friends went frogging. I got to carry (actually drag) the bag of live frogs that they had gigged . He didn’t even get mad at me when I dragged the bottom out of the bag and twenty-five or thirty frogs escaped in as many different directions. When he went to Rice , I was able to stay with him sometimes when his roommates were away. On several occasions, I hitched a ride at four in the morning On a truck from the local freight company to their terminal in Houston . Then I walked the four miles from the terminal to Rice.(Can you imagine a thirteen year old being allowed to do that today) When I got out of the service and was struggling with going to school and working nights and weekends at Churches Chicken, he offered me a job that allowed me to spend my nights and weekends with my young bride. At that time I had no idea that I would work for him for nine years. After that I got my own business and he stayed at his. During the last forty years I only saw him on some holidays and funerals. This past November I called him on his birthday. It was then that I found out that his health had been in decline for a year. A few weeks later, my other brother visited him and informed me how serious his condition was. Since my own health issues five years before , I had spent hundreds of hours researching health issues and planned to go see him to see if I might help. Before I could, he collapsed and was admitted to the hospital and never regained consciousness. Too little, too late. I don’t know why he never reached out to me and feel badly for not reaching out to him. Families, friends drift apart. Its a common problem in our hectic world. While I can’t go back, I can look forward. I don’t ever want to be thinking, Should have, Could have, Would have again.