Family

To turn a great line from literature on its head, "It is the worst of times. It is the best of times."

It's been a year and a half since my last post. To say the least, it's been an eventful time. Some of it I'll write about, some of it I shall not. I said in the beginning that this is to be a blog about the intersection of art and guitars, and that is still my intention. Stay tuned.

But first, please indulge me as I write about something more wonderful than art.

I returned to my beloved hometown of Atlanta a year ago, unexpectedly, unemployed, and unprepared. It has been the most amazing year of my life. My parents long-ago deceased, I tumbled into the warm embrace of my siblings and our extended family.

And I found that the answer to my needs lay more in theirs than it did in my own.

I'm the youngest of six by a country mile, 12 years junior to the one they called "baby" before I was born. I have little use for the term "in-law". My brothers and sisters married when I was a kid, and "in-law" implies a degree of separation which simply does not exist in my heart.

I came home to see my sister "in-law" sliding into the terminal stages of ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease), and my eldest brother "in-law" afflicted with chronic conditions too numerous to list here, my brother and sister exhausting themselves as caregivers, and...

...Beauty in the face of adversity.

While our television networks search far and wide to broadcast the most dysfunctional families imaginable, I witnessed, from within, a truly functional family. The phone rings. "I'm coming over. What do you need?" A child flies in from halfway across the continent to "hang out for a few days, just to visit". My brother is dragged away for lunch so he can experience a bit of normalcy amid a week of hell...

I have the honor of being a part of this.

Our beloved sister (not "in-law") Robyn succumbed to ALS on Thanksgiving Eve. Our beloved brother (not "in-law") Charlie faces major surgery, again, tomorrow at age 80.

With them we stand. If this be not art, what is?