Today would have been my brother Philip’s 51st birthday.
Regular readers will know of his death just after Easter, which I wrote about here and here. I was and am so deeply grateful for all the love and sympathy I felt from this blogging community, even though most of us have never met.
Philip was a man with Down’s Syndrome. He died from an infection he was too frail to fight, having suffered from Alzheimer’s for a few years.
I know some of you have also watched the identity of those you love being sucked away by dementia. For me at the time, it was often all I could see and I could not recognise the funny, lively, loving person I had known. I didn’t visit him as often as I should, because I was not strong enough to bear it.
In the time since Philip’s death, I have had the joy of beginning to reclaim the brother I knew before what made him himself was eroded. All kinds of good memories have resurfaced, and with them the feeling that in some ways I have him back.
Going through old family photos, I found a series of a beach holiday which made me remember how very lucky we were, what an absolutely golden childhood we had, full of love and happiness. Here are a few of those photos, with Philip, our sister, me and mum and dad. (I’m the one with the long hair and ice cream!)
And the reason I’ve called this post Angel is because of the serendipity of the internet. I saw a wonderful Sigur Ros video over at Jen’s, and sent it on to Rima because I thought she’d like it. Rima (who also had a sibling with Down’s) sent me another Sigur Ros video in return, featuring the wonderful Perlan Theatre Group.
The video starts with the quote below by Thomas Carlyle
Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.
Philip loved music, he loved dancing, he loved performing, and he would have loved to have been in this video!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Tracy 06.25.08 at 7:34 pm
Beautiful post, beautiful pictures, beautiful song.
another Barbara 06.25.08 at 10:45 pm
Happy Birthday, Philip! You are remembered with love and your joyful life is celebrated as those who loved you think of you.
Tess, I lost my mother to Alzheimers and send mighty hugs as you. Please have some special treat to honor your beloved brother.
Hugs - Barbara
rebecca 06.25.08 at 11:22 pm
what wonderful family pictures! and sigur ros is quickly becoming a favorite of mine…another wonderful video and they captured the innocence and tenderness of those with down syndrome.
thank you for sharing this with us.
Elaine 06.26.08 at 3:51 am
There is another angel is this story — the writer of this post.
Barbara 06.26.08 at 6:04 am
magical, beautiful, transcendent … thank you, Tess, for sharing your brother’s birthday with us in this way.
I share some of your experience in that my mother lapsed into the recesses of her mind, never to emerge, in the last year or so of her life. I send you a hug.
(barefoot) Barbara
Barney 06.26.08 at 1:35 pm
Tess, I had a younger brother in the 1950s who had Down’s Syndrome. I never knew him because my parents, following the advice current at the time, put him in a home (this may also have had something to do with the fact that my father was very ill with cancer - from which he subsequently died). My brother died in his early teens, I think.
I say “I think” because I was at boarding school and he was in a home, so he was never part of my life and I was never part of his. I don’t even recall being told that he had died. Now that I think about this, and seeing your lovely family photos, I realise just how much I missed by not getting to know him.
I know, too, the horror of seeing loved ones losing their identity through Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. My fearsomely intelligent Aunt Eveleigh suffered from Alzheimer’s; my mother had vascular dementia, suffering a series of mini-strokes that gradually removed her capacities and changed her in deeply distressing ways.
And yet, the luminous inner reality of each of them was not diminished by the dementia or by the Down’s Syndrome. The radiance of the soul may be obscured by disease and disorder, just as the sun may be obscured from our view by clouds, but that reality is still there.
Thank you so much, Tess, for sharing your lovely photos - a glimpse of happiness - and the Sigur Ros video (I love Sigur Ros). It’s wonderful that you can begin to reclaim the reality of your brother.
Tess 06.26.08 at 8:50 pm
Thank you all so much.
Tracy: welcome, and thank you for commenting.
AB: hugs back, the loss of your mother in this way must have been devastating.
Rebecca: I’m really glad to have discovered sigur ros, I’ve listened to quite a lot of their stuff the last few evenings.
Elaine: Blush
Barefoot: “the recesses of her mind” - I hope the experience was better for her than for you. Hug back.
Barney: this is such a sad story. I can understand it though, with your father being so ill and as you say, the advice then was different. But it is sad that you were never able to have any relationship with your brother. What you say about “the luminous inner reality” is absolutely true.
Rima 06.27.08 at 3:24 pm
Ahh, Tess, these are such lovely pictures…
We are lucky people to have shared our childhoods with these angels..
Glad to be part of an internet serendipity like this
x
EmJayDee 06.28.08 at 8:56 am
Thanks for your post. It is interesting the perspective that comes with time after a bereavement. I’m finding something a bit similar with my Mum who died in March. It’s as if the recent difficulties fade and the lifetime resurfaces. Philip looks to have been a great brother.
Tess 06.28.08 at 4:41 pm
Rima: we are indeed lucky!
EmJayDee: I think that’s a good way of putting it - “the lifetime resurfaces”. Thank you.
lucy 07.01.08 at 5:12 pm
oh, tess. just catching up here. happy birthday, philip. he is an angel indeed. are you certain he is not in that video?
i agree with, elaine, my dear. you, too, are a very special angel. thank you so much for all that you offer us. xoxooxoxoxoxoo
Sunrise Sister 07.02.08 at 7:33 pm
Tess, wanting to catch up with you and others I’ve missed reading the last weeks, I planned to scan through quickly…..thinking maybe I would just view the video on this post, I was captured immediately by the beauty of individuality of the angels’ performance. What a beautiful, beautiful film and now, of course, I’ve read your post and so sorry I did not miss it!! Philip must have known you were special also.
Abdur Rahman 07.03.08 at 10:43 am
Peace Tess,
Allah! Beautiful pictures. They remind me of the true purpose of life: love.
Though I’m not very old, nor very knowledgeable, these photos make me yearn to be what I know in truth I should always be - a child of God, laughing in the sunshine, eating ice cream!
Thank you for these photos. They mean a lot.
Abdur Rahman
Tess 07.03.08 at 8:42 pm
Lucy and Sunrise, thank you both very much for these lovely comments.
Abdur, I love what you’ve said here: a child of God, laughing in the sunshine, eating ice cream! That’s perfect. (And you may not be very old but I think you are very knowledgeable, in the best way!)