The Best Laid Plans...Again

   I had good intentions...really good intentions. No, not about New Year's Resolutions (gave them up years ago). I had truly wanted to be diligent about blog-posting every Thursday. Then, two giants created a roadblock. Giant #1 (Google...Blogger's papa) and Giant #2 (Apple...my main technology connection and master) do NOT play well together, making creating blog posts on my iPad a teeth-grinding experience. And, I'm not doing this to be consistently irritated. I'm doing this because I enjoy writing the posts and sharing pictures of our world. Sigh.

Still, I've always believed "where there's a will, there's a way." And that "way" involved digging out my ancient, steam-powered HP lugger-of-a-laptop. Folks, we are talking Methuselah here! We can't even recall WHEN we bought it, but my Microsoft Office Suite is dated 2010 (works just fine...way better than the awful, horrible, terrible web-based applications used now). But, I digress...slightly...

Anyway, in order to get the lug-top up & running to help me create my blog posts without screaming obscenities and tearing out what's left of my hair (as typically happens when I use my iPad to try to post on Blogger), said lug-top had to update...EVERYTHING. That's what you get when you don't turn a device on for over a year. Big sigh.

So, I get all of those ducks in the proper rows, but before I can start to compose my first post of the year, life intervened. In the most difficult way possible. My wonderful, kind, sincere, considerate, encouraging, intelligent, funny, and loving older brother*, Terry (that’s him with us in that picture above)...who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's a few years ago...received an amended diagnosis that was a blow to all: he had Lewy Body Dementia. Then, almost before we could begin to read, research, and digest just what this cruel disease meant, he was gone. 

LaDonna, Terry, Jack, & Maredith

I did not intend for this first Thursday post of the new year to be sad, but that's the prevailing feeling. So, instead of piling on more words of our woe of having to say the final goodbye to this beautiful soul, let me just pop in a few pictures of happier days.

*Terry was actually my older HALF brother, as our father Sidney and his mother Lenore shared a whirlwind WWII romance, followed closely by a wedding in her native state of Pennsylvania (where Daddy was sent to Officers' Candidate School after enlisting in the Army Air Corps in 1943). Terry was born in '44, but the end of the war and the end of their marriage happened in tandem. To truncate a really long and complicated story (the ends-and-outs of which still elude me), he grew up in PA..in Williamsport, home of the Little League World Series, no less...with his mom and her family while I spent the first 10 years of my life thinking I was (and exhibiting all the common traits of) the oldest child in the family. 

I learned of Terry's existence when I was 9 or 10, during a Sunday drive to visit the Stewart clan on the farm in Whiteville, TN. As usual, I was reading…probably a Nancy Drew mystery, if I had to guess…when I realized that the conversation floating back from my parents in the front seat was being carried on in whispers. I heard the same name mentioned at least twice, so of course I asked “who’s Terry?” Thought Daddy was going to run off the road…could tell Momma was thinking hard and fast about what to say next. She finally said, “it’s time to tell them.” And so, right there somewhere on a back road through West Tennessee, I learned (1) Daddy had been married and divorced before; (2) Daddy had another child…a son…who lived in far-off Pennsylvania (hey, this was the early 60’s…it WAS far-off!);and (3) most importantly to my existence, I had an older brother! How thrilling! So many questions to ask: who, what, where, when??! Unfortunately, I started with “what:” what’s his name? Daddy said “John Terrell Lunn.” It was Momma’s turn to “run off the road,” only she wasn’t driving. NO, she said…can’t be…that’s Jack’s name! Daddy realized his mistake and corrected course: William Terrell Lunn…also named after his mother’s father, but he’s always been called Terry. After that exchange, even I could tell that more questions would not be appreciated at that time. So I swallowed them…and tried to imagine what it would be like to have an older brother come live with us (what I didn’t comprehend was that Terry would have been 19-20 by this time…beginning his own life with the Navy and college…and most unlikely to move in with a family he didn’t know). Jack was definitely in the car that day…and he would have been 6 or so…but he says he doesn’t have any memory of any of this.

Even though Terry lived in Tupelo when I was attending MSCW in Columbus (!), and then he lived in Cordova when Jack lived less than a mile away and we had just moved from Cordova to Collierville (!!), we didn't actually meet until we were both in mid-life. Still, that was NEVER an impediment to our relationship (other than feeling deep regret that our 3 parents...the ADULTS...made some choices in those early years that were not in the 3 kids' best interests). From the first moment he arrived at our front door in Collierville, I felt an immediate connection to my brother Terry. It was like I had found the missing piece to make the jigsaw puzzle complete! The fact that he and I shared nearly every single Lunn characteristic (hair color, eye color, complexion, a smile that "includes the eyes," a square chin, and an insatiable interest in learning anything and everything about anything and everything) made it so easy to accept that I was a younger sister as well as an older sister.

We are leaving Thursday to drive to KY to be with the love of his life, my sweet SIL LaDonna, and to attend his Celebration of Life service, so I'm actually posting this Thursday's post on a Thursday. Will wonders never cease...

I'll do my best to get my act together when we get back next week and post a Thursday's Child post on our trip to KY. Fingers crossed the lug-top co-ops!

Here’s a link to Terry’s obituary: