The Yard Sale

Last night we went up to my mother's to help her clean out my grandmother's house with a huge yard sale. I could hardly sleep at all. I do not know if it had to do with consuming too much caffeine or just anxiety about the upcoming yardsale. Anyways. My brother was a useless piece of junk. As always. I do not know how a 28 year old man can feel entitled to do nothing to help anyone but have everything handed to him just because. I wont even get in to it but the Chaplain summed it up pretty well in her service last week regarding dysfunction in families and there always being someone in the family who is so selfish and self consumed they cant see past the end of their nose. Well, that is him...
So, Chris worked his BEHIND off... I did as much as I could with CJ in the Ergo carrier on my back. My mother has a heart condition and my father has his issues with his knees. So, all the work was left up to me and Chris as my lazy brother sat up in his "cave" and did NOTHING.
The yard sale itself went really well. We helped push alot of the items out so that nothign would be brought back in even if it meant selling it for 25 cents. My grandmother has this friend Karen who is about my mother's age who worked HER behind off as well. She also recently had Gall bladder surgery and is on the mend. But, if she didnt show up to help Chris, everything would have been a HUGE mess.
I am about to let my brother have it though... and I really have to bite my tongue as I know my parents will ultimitely stick up for him no matter how assinine his remarks are. They enable him to be the way he is... and take it up the wazoo for it. They let him walk all over them as they do many other people in their lives.
Besides the nerviness of my brother, the one thing that really bothered me about the whole day was not the heat... it was not CJ being CJ.... it was not the people trying to talk down prices... it wasnt even the fact that we were selling off all my grandmother's favorite things...
One man came and bought a whole bunch of books of my fathers. They were being stored in a very old box.... When Chris was working on condensing the boxes... he found a very old letter in the bottom...
The date on the letter was August 11, 1967..... the letter was written by a 15 year old girl... That girl was my mother.... the letter was sent on August 11th which is my grandfather's birthday (my mom's dad) and the letter was addressed to my uncle brad... my mom's brother... in Vietnam while he was serving.... What bothered me was that he never received the letter from his sister... that letter was mailed to a foreign, wartorn country... my uncle was shot down on August 24, 1967 so we know that that letter was returned home without his body. They have never gotten his remains... and now it is almost August 24th... another anniversary... to find the absolute last letter my mother probably ever wrote to her brother thinking he was ok... and him not even getting to read it.. to think about how a 15 year old girl thinks.. and to think of my mom as 15 years old... it is alot to stir up emotions in my mind... the outside of the letter had SWAK written on it. The letter talked about how she was ill and nobody else had her illness.. and just silly talk from a 15 year old girl about how my grandmother took out some old ladies and all the did was talk and how they were just going to run out of breath ... then writing in big letters "THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN"
Just the naivety of it all... and not knowing that in the next 13 days her whole world would come crashing down on her... then, in another box we found letters from a friend of my uncles before he graduated from college written to him from a friend of his who was already in Vietnam and how horrible it was... my uncle was so eager to go over... and jumped through hoops to make sure he could go.
I dont know... just alot of emotions were brought up inside of me.... Just trying to comprehend everything that they went through and never ever regained a steady foothold in any of the days of their lives since then....

God Bless our Troops... may they all return home safe and that no more families have to go through the pain my family has endured over the past 41 years of their lives....