Tomorrow, May 13, 2013, my birthday, marks my final day of employment at Central Michigan University and the beginning of a long-anticipated retirement. I've decided to use a blog to serve as a means to track my activities as a person of leisure, especially musings on my readings and researches. A long-time fan of the 'Net on account of its ability to connect a community of thinkers, I realize that you need to put some skin in the game to participate, so this is my opportunity to jump in.
But today is a special day. Sixty-two Mother's Days ago, in 1951, my twin brother, William Louis Cochran and I were born in Philadelphia's National Stomach Hospital, 1514 N. 15th Street. Bill died of cancer in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 3, 1986, and every birthday without him is a sad reminder that he died long before his time. That's me, covering him up in his stroller, when we were tots.
And here's a photo taken by Bill himself (toward the end of his life he took up photography as a vocation) in the early 1980's:
I was happy to learn that Bill's first grandchild, Laila Faye Broadhead, was born in West Wendover, Nevada on October 29, 2012, a few days after the 26th anniversary of our losing him.
The actor Leonardo DiCaprio is said to have remarked: "Brothers don't necessarily have to say anything to each other-they can sit in a room and be together and just be completely comfortable with each other." The hardest part about losing a twin (and only brother) is coming to terms with that loss of intimacy that comes from growing up together. More than a quarter century has provided a bandage over that wound, but the pain remains.
Happy Birthday, Grandpa Bill.
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