Bringing up the ‘family distancing’ earlier this week has me focusing on my family more than ever. It’s been rolling around in my brain for days! I have never understood siblings that stop speaking for years at a time or some such nonsense. I have been gifted only one sibling, a big brother, Brian…and as much as we have aggravated each other over the years, I am always so grateful that we made the pact years ago that there was never going to come a day where we would cut each other out.

The late, great Keith Whitley wrote a song that I often find myself singing to myself:

We shared the same last name and the same color eyes
But we fought like tigers over that old red bike
“I’m battin’ first and you can’t use my glove”
It wouldn’t take long until push came to shove

But we looked out for each other With brotherly love

There’s a bond that brothers know
And it gets stronger as they grow
A love that time and miles can’t come between
We disagree but in the end
There will never be two closer friends
And brotherly love is something we all need

Those aren’t the full lyrics…and I’m not a brother, so it doesn’t fully apply; but yet it does!! It resonates with me right down to my toes! Growing up on MacLellan, we played with toy trucks and climbed trees and street hockey and water balloon battles and so much more! Living in a neighbourhood where we were among the youngest was so much fun! The older kids were babysitters and teachers and had such an influence on us (sometimes good, sometimes bad haha)! We had parents who loved us and were very much present. We had grandparents on both sides that adored us. Aunts, uncles, cousins galore! We were raised to have faith in something bigger than ourselves; to be kind to others; to value family; to be of service to our community; to be considerate of other peoples feelings; to extend grace wherever possible; and to sometimes stop the car in the middle of nowhere, crank the tunes and dance!

And through it all, I had my big brother forging a path for me! When we were little, Brian joined the church choir (I think my Mom had more to do with that than Brian when she recognized his musical abilities!) so I waited impatiently until I could join too! Brian became a Beaver so I waited impatiently until I could join Brownies! Brian joined the swim team so I waited impatiently until I could join too! Brian joined the parish youth group so I waited impatiently until I could join too! Are you sensing the trend? haha. Brian always had ambitions and wanted to do and see and be so many things…while I needed more direction and more planning. He knew how to have fun and throw caution to the wind…while I was always much better at doing what I was told. I was constantly in awe of him.

Brian and I grew up close. His friends that became like family were my family too. My friends that became like family were his family too. We still call my oldest girlfriend our Godsister (our parents are her Godparents)! Did we fight? Oh good lord, yes! Mega battles! But what shines through the cobwebs in my memory are the amazing ways he came through for me through the years.

When I was eight, Cabbage Patch Kids were all the rage! Everyone just had to adopt one! They cost $45.00 and were the IT toy that year; causing parents to literally fistfight each other to get one in the stores! I entered that total into an inflation calculator and that is the equivalent of a toy costing $122.75 today! Being the anxious, people pleasing child that I was, I knew better than to ask for one! Every girl I knew had at least one. But I wouldn’t ask. My birthday was coming and Mom asked me if I wanted one and I said no but suggested that one of the knock offs would be good enough (yes it breaks my heart that I was that child). My back door neighbours had just had a baby that spring and named her Jane Marie, so I named my knock off Cabbage Patch, Jane Marie, after her! I loved her to death and we have pictures of me doing tea parties and posing with her under the big tree in the back yard! In the fall when school went back, other girls brought theirs to school but I did not. As much as *I* loved my Jane Marie, I knew the other girls would make fun of her. Instead they made fun of me for not having any doll at all to play with. Tough times on the elementary school playground haha What on earth does this have to do with my brother? Well, let me tell you. Brian was 11 by then and had a paper route (which he hated cause he hated getting up early in the morning!) and he knew what kids were like and he saw how all the other girls brought their Cabbage Patch dolls to school. So he saved his money. He saved all fall. And on Christmas morning, I woke up to the gift of Quincy Ethel, my very own Cabbage Patch kid, courtesy of my big brother! I still have her and she remains a huge symbol of brotherly love.

The year I was graduating from high school, Brian had just finished second year at Kings/Dal in Halifax and had set off to tree plant in the west for the summer. It was strange thinking about him being absent from such a milestone. I, of course, had been to his graduation and I remember feeling surprised at how disappointed I was that he wouldn’t be there. The very night before, who landed home to surprise me for graduation? My big brother.

After graduation, I went on to be an exchange student, living in Brussels, Belgium for a school year. I did their version of a senior year of high school. But their schooling was so incredibly different from ours!! I landed in a class called 6 Sciences Humaines or 6SH for short (they start their numbers over again in junior high so 6=our 12). And in that class of absolutely amazing people (I’ll get to stories about them and my adventures in Belgium some day soon!!), I took an anthropology class. One quick google search gave me this definition for the word, anthropology: Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures and societies, in both the present and past.

I loved this class and it was actually pretty cool for them, too, to have someone from another country and another culture participating in their class! Again I’m sure you’re wondering what on earth does my brother have to do with an anthropology class in a high school in Brussels? No, he didn’t show up although that would have been really cool too! He and his friend, Allan Campbell (who is also my friend…remember those friends who become family? He’s definitely one of those! He’s also the same friend who came to the DR when Brian came to meet Joan!) made a video to send to me, chronicling a day in the life of 2 twenty somethings out and about in Halifax! It included a cameo with a greeting from the comedian, Tony Quinn and took viewers on a virtual tour of the city! We watched the video in its entirety in my anthropology class! My Belgian friends and fellow students were learning about what it is like to live in Halifax…by watching my own big brother! Pretty big proud sister moment!

One summer Brian and I had apartments 200 metres apart from each other! It was the summer of fun parties and late nights and belly laughs! One hot hot day in August, I was taking a nap on a Sunday afternoon after a particularly late Saturday night, when Brian came knocking on the door. He was upset and was asking for my help cause he had smashed Dad’s new truck!! Now, Dad’s new truck was a Dodge v10 beautiful beast of a thing…and we know very well that if we ever smashed it, we better be smashed too cause he would be cross! (not really, for the record…but we knew the tongue lashing we would get!). “Oh no!” I cried and leaped out of bed to go inspect the damage. We went out my back door and around to the driveway, where Brian’s roommate, Brent, was waiting for me with a super soaker water gun and drenched me!!! That started a water war that raged for the rest of that summer!! Having a big brother could be aggravating but a whole lotta fun!!

We drifted a little bit after he got married, which is pretty normal. He was at a different phase in his life than I was but we were always there for each other if we needed each other. We worked together daily so we were always in each others lives but we forged new friend groups, separately, for the first time. When it came time to baptize his kids, it was, and remains, my great honour, to be Olivia’s Godmother. At that point we had no idea that I wouldn’t go on to have children of my own, but I always recognized how significant it was to be asked to play such a role in a child’s life. It’s a role I do not take lightly and Olivia and I are still very close to this day. Brian has lots of friends, like good, solid friends that could have very easily been chosen. It means more to me than he will ever know to be Olivia’s Godmother. My heart is so full as I type this…and it may even be a little difficult to see through the tears filling my eyes! Big brothers bring you amazing nieces and nephews…and a Goddaughter too!

In 2011, on the day before Brian’s birthday, we got a call that no one ever wants to receive. Brian and I have 13 first cousins. 9 on our mother’s MacDonald side and 4 on our father’s England side. But a quick sidebar…our parents met because Mom’s first cousin, Cathy, married Dad’s brother, Louie! So Cathy and Louie’s kids were our first cousins on one side and our second cousins on the other side! These double cousins were always particularly close to us. Ronnie lived with us when he attended St.F.X. and Lisa spent tons of time with us while taking nursing at St. Martha’s and in later years, she and I spent significant time together at our grandmother’s, especially and we’d bonded over our later in life engagements and caregiving. But on that terrible Saturday morning in May, we found out that Lisa had slipped on the stairs at the cottage in McArra’s Brook, hitting her head and, tragically, passing away at the age of 40. I can’t yet begin to write about the shock and grief surrounding Lisa’s death. Even now, ten years later, it is too painful. Someday I will tell you all about how incredible she was – so funny and so thoughtful and so devoted to her family. But for today, I’ll tell you what it did for Brian & I. Looking back on it, it was a clear turning point in our lives. You can’t lose someone so close to you, so young, without having a come-to-Jesus moment yourself. It was a staggering reminder that life is short; that we need to love the ones we love with all our hearts and we need to never hold back or let petty arguments or judgements or differences of opinion get in our way. I remember standing in the kitchen at Mom’s, crying, and vowing to always be there for each other, cause we only have each other. Big brother’s are irreplaceable.

I have admired my brother for many things. His broken wing syndrome (he often finds broken wings that he takes home to heal and help fly on their own…and I’m not talking about birds); his utter devotion to his children; his tenacity in pursuit of love; his ability to not care about what other people think; that fact that he is 100% nonjudgmental; his fearlessness; his ability to adapt to any situation and strike up a conversation with anyone and everyone; his famous “why not?” when I ask, can we do that?; his legendary political debates on social media (even though we are often on opposite teams) and hockey battles too! And for so many more reasons…but one of the things I’m most astonished by is his pure talent. My brother is an amazing musician. It’s a simple fact. He can pick up pretty much any instrument and make beautiful music with it. It’s an incredible thing to see! While I have been a cheerleader and audience member forever (when people ask me if I’m musical, I tell them the gospel truth: that all musicians need someone to clap when they’re finished! I’m a great clapper!), I have yet to listen to his solo album, Blue, without openly weeping! It is a musician’s recording for sure…he poured his heart and his soul into it and it is amazing! If you haven’t had the chance to listen to it, you can find him on itunes here:

https://music.apple.com/ca/artist/brian-england/850547325

or on spotify, here:

Or if you’re old school, like me and you want an actual CD to play, please just leave me a message and I can hook you up! I have watched Brian play on stages all over the Maritimes and I know his stories and all his songs…but I could never grow tired of listening to him play! His ability to connect with his audience makes him an entertainer extraordinaire! Big brothers who can sing and play and entertain make awesome concert destinations and they’re great at house parties too!

In 2015 my brother called me to tell me he’d met someone. “Oh yeah?” I asked, not really paying too close attention. He had had several long term girlfriends that I had not been particularly close to so while his life intertwined with mine, I was always used to not really having much of a relationship with his significant others. A few weeks later, he told me he was seeing this lady, Debbie, exclusively and I should meet her. “Oh yeah?” I said again and thought, “here we go”. By July he asked me to meet her. I didn’t want to meet her. I wanted to make sure she was going to stick around for awhile before I’d get invested. Mom and Dad met her and fell in love with her. But I was not interested. Finally in September, they had been together for months and were very serious about each other; I’d never seen Brian this happy and this comfortable in his own skin before. So now I was starting to feel a little bad haha. I should probably meet her! But I felt like eek, is she going to hate me now for not meeting her before now?? Brian thought it would be fun if we started bowling; that if we were all on a bowling team, we would get to know each other while DOING something so it would take any and all pressure off. One little problem. I am the world’s worst bowler. And that statement would be proven correct at the end of the season when I won the award at the banquet for worst bowler in the league!! But I played. And I got to know Debbie. After two weeks, I couldn’t imagine our family without her. She and her two kids fit right in with every one of us and it was like we were all meant to be together all along. Two years later, on the same beach in Puerto Plata where Joan and I got married, Debbie & Brian said I do. Being an asshole little sister, I rather jokingly told him to not mess it up cause we just might keep Debbie if they every broke up!! Debbie has become my confidant, one of my closest friends and my sister. Big brothers bring you a sister in law that just might be my soul sister!

When my husband got stuck, unexpectedly, in the Dominican Republic earlier this year for almost six months due to covid (You can be sure I’ll have a post about THAT!), it was a very difficult time for us. Getting him home to Nova Scotia wound up costing us ten times what it would normally cost…at a time when he hadn’t worked in six months. It was a nightmare. The week before Joan finally was able to come home, I received an unexpected and unsolicited etransfer from my brother. He knew we’d gotten the flight and quarantine hotel covered but figured, and rightfully, that it would be expensive for Joan to travel across the island to Punta Cana to catch the only available direct-to-Canada flights and wanted to help to offset costs. I saw the email come in so sent him a text message asking him what was up? He said, bring my brother home. And again I wept. Sometimes big brothers come through for you in ways you didn’t even think about.

Don’t get me wrong, just like in the song, Brian and I have fought like tigers! We have disagreements and he drives me to drink some days!! We don’t always agree on things but we try to have respect for each other’s opinions and actions. And we always try to lead from a place of love. I have made him so cross that he’s near lost his mind…and vice versa!! But our vow to each other when Lisa passed rings true always. We are all we’ve got in the siblings department and we fight to protect that relationship no matter how off track we can get sometimes. Sometimes it is easy to only focus on the negative but when it comes to the people we love, shouldn’t we always try to nourish the good and watch it grow? I will always look up to my big brother and I will always be grateful for the beautiful soul that he is. I will always see the good and slough off the bad and hope that he does the same!

“We share the same last name and the same colour eyes… There’s a bond that brothers know and it gets stronger as they grow; A love that time and miles can’t come between.
We disagree but in the end, there will never be two closer friends”

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