ROTHENBURGER – The special sadness of being your family’s lone survivor

IN THE YEAR SINCE my brother died (today is the anniversary), I’ve wrestled with what’s painfully different about losing him. I couldn’t identify it at first.

I’ve outlived my mother, my father, grandparents, a daughter, a grandson, many aunts and uncles, quite a few cousins and a lot of friends. And now my only brother. I read a column by Dr. Brian Goldman earlier this year that explained a lot for me.

Dr. Goldman is an ER physician, and he writes and broadcasts a weekly column for CBC Radio that I listen to whenever I can.

He wrote about the death of his sister Orliffe, and the emptiness it has left him with. “I’m the only one remaining from the family in which I grew up,” he wrote.

There it was, my answer.

Just as Dr. Goldman’s column was an epiphany for me, he had learned from CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who had lost his father, brother and then his mother.

“She was the last person from the little family that I grew up in,” Cooper said in a podcast. “The last person who knew the same stories as me and had the same memories. Now I’m the only one. I feel like a lighthouse keeper on an empty island.”

Those are the same feelings I’ve been experiencing.

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Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.