Thanksgiving five years ago in 2017 was at my brother’s house. He was so happy to host us.

My brother did not have much, but the little he had, he shared. He didn’t have a table for all to sit around, but we all managed to sit together and eat, talk, listen to music and dance.

And photos, lots of photos. He loved taking pictures. It was a beautiful day. Those memories came up on my Facebook page today. It hurt looking at those memories. He was in those photos, of course, but so was my stepson, Alberto Locascio, who also passed from COVID on September 20, 2021. How I wish they were both here. We miss them both.

Today, the night before Thanksgiving 2022, I thank God for them and those memories. I am thankful for the time we spent together. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our angels in heaven.

My brother died of Covid very recently (Summer 2022). He was 50. He’d had other health problems — he was an alcoholic, and he was very obese. But Covid sped his demise. He was a big-time Trump guy. He loved “owning the libs.” He was angry all the time. He did not believe in getting vaccinated. He thought Covid was a bogus ploy by the elites to control him. Then he was admitted to the hospital with breathing problems. That’s when they found a host of other issues related to Covid. And he, of course, tested positive repeatedly in the hospital. He got angry about that and checked himself out of the hospital, even though he could barely walk at that time. Then he got even worse. He had to check into another hospital — the first one would not take him back after his behavior there. It took him a while to die. Two months, I think. He never faced the reality of his situation, and the hick doctors in his rural hospital put that he died “of a heart attack” on his death certificate because they, the doctors, did not want to “give” something to “the libs”. Well, I know the truth. My brother died of Covid. And it was needless.

My brother wasn’t always like this. He used to be a kid who cared about others, a kind person who wanted to change the world a little bit. He got his law degree and passed the bar in two states. He, for a while, had a thriving practice. He played sports. He got married, and had a son. He was thoughtful. He was going places. He was always a Republican, but when Trump came it was as if my brother found his savior. He definitely found a home and justification for his rage.

His anger towards anyone who wasn’t in love with Trump eventually caused me to have to stop speaking with him in 2020. I knew people who died of Covid in the early days, and people who got very, very ill. And then one day he got angry at me and accused me of being against him. We stopped talking for a year and a half. Until he was dying.

He broke my heart. But the last two months of his life, he let go of his anger and hate. He became insightful. Funny. Wise. Of course, a big part of that was the hospital not allowing him to drink alcohol. His mind became sharp again. He was focused enough to create, and he did — right up to the end. He and I talked daily. For hours. I had my brother back.

I think of my brother’s end as a redemption story. He got very lost. Life kicked him around, and he lost his way. I’m grateful that he found his way back to himself before he died.

I miss the brother I had at the end. Every day. I’m sad. Angry. I don’t know what else. But sometimes I’m feeling peaceful about it.

Picking out our Christmas tree was always stressful. Mike would pick out a 10-foot tree for a house with 8-foot ceilings. Then we had to wait three days for the branches to fall before the lights could go on. Well, with 5 daughters there was very little patience for this. But it was actually a joyful time because there was a lot of laughs, singing Mariah Carey Christmas songs and teasing my husband because we had to tie up the tree so it wouldn’t fall down.

Such happy memories that we will never be able to duplicate. Just not the same getting the Christmas tree anymore …

I kept your rosy lips chapstick just to taste your DNA when I miss you most…

Mike Martin, my late husband, came of age (18) during the Selective Service draft for the Viet Nam war. Mike told me he’d drawn a low number, so he’d made the decision to enlist– preferring to be proactive rather than anxiously waiting to learn when or if his number would be called up.

Mike was always a go-getter, working since he was 16 and leaving home and supporting himself at a relatively young age. He’d attended high school near Holloman Air Force Base (and was a champion pole vaulter in H.S. of all things!) Given his familiarity with that military branch living in La Luz, NM just down the road from Alamogordo, home of Holloman, he chose to enlist in the Air Force.

Mike didn’t care for risk, ambiguity, uncertainty. He preferred having control over the direction of his life so he appreciated that, by enlisting, he would have some input into the type of training he’d receive and what areas he could specialize in. He chose several medical specialties. He learned everything from phlebotomy and autopsy to pathology and medical laboratory work. He also utilized those skills at the University of Arizona Hospital and when he lived in San Antonio. Mike’s last civilian job in the medical field was at Marion Merrell Dow in Kansas City. He held that position until shortly before we met each other in college. He’d gone back to school to future-proof his employability by earning a degree in computer programming because he saw that more and more of the work he did in clean rooms and other laboratory settings was becoming computerized.

While in the Air Force, he told me that he was grateful he wasn’t sent overseas as so many men of that era were, including his very best lifelong friend, Bear, who also grew up in La Luz, NM. Bear was sent to Germany. Mike was stationed stateside with duty assignments at Davis-Monthan AFB (Arizona), McChord AFB (Washington), and training at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS. After his regular AF enlistment, he joined the Texas Air National Guard (Kelly AFB) and the Arizona National Guard (Tucson). Mike served a total of 10 years, 9 months.

I hope that posting these memories will honor Mike today, on Veterans Day, by sharing a little bit about his years of service to our country.

P.S. Remember Mike’s friend, Bear? Bear tells the story that when he was discharged and came home from Germany back to La Luz, NM, Mike’s house (where his parents used to live) was the very first place he went. He was so sad to learn that his best buddy wasn’t there, not realizing that Mike was still serving in the Air Force. Years and years later, Mike and I went to La Luz. Mike pointed to a small property and said, “that’s where Bear used to live”. Mike talked about Bear quite often, so I knew who he meant. Between that trip and the following year, out of the blue, they found each other on Facebook. We drove back to La Luz that next year, and lo and behold, that same house Mike had pointed out to me before was exactly where Bear was still living!

Spring of 2020, Bear and his significant other, Sharon, were in their camper visiting Bear’s sister in Arizona when they heard the news announcing the lockdowns. Immediately, Sharon said, “we have to go to Mike and Kim’s”. They pulled that camper from Arizona to Missouri, finding no place to even grab a bit to eat en route because of the lockdowns, arriving in March 2020.

Bear lived here, on our property, until October 2020. It was such a blessing! Mike and Bear relished that time with each other, playing guitars and singing together in the evenings, sharing memories, and telling stories. And Bear felt useful, too, lending a hand on the big construction project Mike was doing to build a duplex for our adult kids.

Bear is a little older than Mike and looked a bit frailer as he aged, so my thought at the time was how wonderful that Mike could spend so much time with Bear before Bear would die someday back in New Mexico. Little did we know, less than a year after Bear’s camper was pulled back to La Luz, Mike was the one who died. Because of COVID, that awful Delta variant that took Mike’s life. Both men served our nation, and both were brothers, the best of friends. I am grateful that the two of them were reunited after many years of thinking of each other but not knowing where they were, and I am especially grateful that they were able to share those 8 months, together, during the first year of the pandemic.