My Brother Died

[Dave]

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[Dave]

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[MrsFrozen]

Thank you so much for your prayers. They are surrounding my family and I and are lifting us up. These prayers mean more to us then you will ever know--your kind thoughts and words of sympathy offer us comfort, but your prayers are what will truly get us through this.

My brother Barry was a joy. I have always been proud to be his sister. Out of all four of my brothers, he and I were the "two peas in a pod" as my Mom and Dad always said. We are very much alike. He always made me laugh, always made me happy. He was so great to be around. I have nothing but wonderful memories of him. He had such a wonderful personality--he was so much fun and the funniest person I ever knew. My brother had so many friends and EVERYONE loves him. He was voted class clown and best laugh for his yearbook this year. He was a senior and would have graduated tonight. He graduated with honors. I have never seen so many people love one person. He brought everyone up. I knew him all his life, and he never had a sad day. He absolutely loved life, and made everyone around him love it, too. Out of all four of the older kids (my youngest brother is 13), he was the only one that never fell away from the Church, the only one who always wore a scapular, the one who never smoked, drank, did drugs, or really did anything bad. It was as if the Lord had His hand on Barry--He knew Barry would come home to Him early, and He didn't want Barry to have any distractions along the way.

The first two days, all I did was cry. Now, we seem to be doing better. It is hard to handle this grief, but I feel the Lord carrying us through this. In hindsight, I see many events that seemed to have happened to prepare us for this, such as Elliott and I coming back to God, and my son David being born, who has given all of us some happiness during all this. We are happy for Barry because we know he is with God. We know that he has no pain. But we feel a sweet, loving sadness because we miss him so deeply. We feel no bitterness, no anger with God. We are leaning on God. We just feel sad because we miss Barry.

At his wake yesterday, we were standing for two and a half hours greeting a constant stream of people who love Barry. At his funeral, the procession to the cemetary must have been a mile long. I have never seen so many people show up. Barry touched the life of EVERYONE he knew.

[url="http://www.wcpo.com/news/2004/local/05/25/fenwick.html"]Here is a link[/url] to where you can read the story about Barry and see a picture of him. My brother looks so much more handsome in his graduation picture, which I am going to scan and post sometime soon. Let me clear up a couple of things about the story. First, no alcohol or drugs were involved. None of them did anything like that. Second, they were all wearing their seatbelts. They were not speeding. The driver, Rob, was only going about 20 miles per hour. Rob had trouble with the mountain road, which was gravel. He was confused and turned too soon--I understand because I get confused in the mountains, too. There was absolutely nothing they could have done differently--it was just an awful accident and not Rob's fault at all. We do not blame him at all, and no charges will be brought. He is a sweet, nice young man and we love him very much. His guilt is tearing him up and he desperately needs our prayers. The car flipped off the cliff and Barry died instantly from a blow to the head. He felt no pain.

Please pray for all involved, their friends and family. Please pray for the other boy who died. I don't know the details about him, but I know he died right away, too, so I imagine it was in the same way.

Everyone keeps telling my that I am strong, that they can't believe how strong I am. But I do not deserve that credit. God does, and Barry does. And my family does. They are the ones getting me through this.

[Luthien]

Hes the blessed one. He gets to be with God sooner than us, and we're fortunate to have him praying for us to get us into Heaven. Plus he gets to hang out with my big brother, Andrew, who would have been 21 this year.