CELEBRATING MY BROTHER

Today's date, my brother's birthday, is burned in my mind.

My brother, David Frankel, was the only male child in my father's family, the one child who could carry on the family name. He drowned in a boating accident a few months before his 19th birthday. He was a freshman at Antioch college just beginning to figure out what he wanted to be and do. And he never got a chance to drive the second-hand convertible he bought. I wrote about this and how his death affected me and my family in "Spiffy Cadillac Cars."

As I say his name, I think of my mother, how she loved him, celebrated him, lived through the ups and downs in her life, and helped me -- never stopped helping me and being there for me -- how she gave me her strength. I celebrate her birthday every September in "My Mom's Birthday."

Mom and David are gone, but are part of what makes my mind wander here-and-there, find significance in the many things that are changing, and write-talk about them -- about the sense that I have that the future is mile-a-minute coming in around me, and I am racing into what the earth will be like when I am gone.

David and Em

That's me age 7 with my two front teeth gone; David was 3.

Yes, people who are gone have shaped you, and made you what you are right this minute.

Celebrating them keeps them very much alive and present in your life.

Celebrating them is celebrating YOU.


Thanks, Mom, I celebrate David's birthday today, Mom, for us.

Mom

(VIDEO) KOOKY FANTASY ADVENTURE

Emily Frankel tells her husband John Cullum to close his eyes.

"Right now, picture us doing something crazy, silly, thrilling! What would we do?"