In the Face of Fifty
We celebrate another milestone tomorrow. My brother Rob would have been fifty. It is a sad occasion in that I wish he were here so I could have helped him celebrate it. At the same time, I'm choosing to turn it into a happy occasion. The reason being, it's what Rob would have wanted. He would want us to celebrate him, not cry into our beer. If he were around, I have no doubt that he would take all the age jokes and senior citizen cracks and ribbing in stride, and would probably throw some barbs back as well. He'd smile big for the camera - it was his style. You don't see any pictures of Rob with the straight-line, no teeth smile that I have in most pictures of me. He was truly a very happy person an he wanted others to be happy too. In looking back over the past years, there was no birthday of his that really sticks out to me as being special. Because I am in Waukesha and have been for 27 years, I didn't get the chance to go to many of his birthdays. The one I ...