Gary

I've talked about everyone in my immediate family except my older brother Gary.I have very conflicted feelings about him and the tremendous toll he took on my parents and siblings.I didn't like him much, but I was at his funeral a few years ago, and that ended up being ok.Gary was extremely bright. He was a Bridge master and an excellent violinist.He could have had a successful career in music, but he chose instead to con people almost all of his adult life as his preferred way to make money. He " borrowed" lots of money from all of us, but never paid it back. He was a consummate liar, and he bilked money from many women. He had been in the Navy, when he was younger, and got an honorable medical discharge, so he utilized the Veteran hospitals when he was older, because he didn't have insurance. I liked his first wife Barbara and his last wife Virginia.He had other wives and girlfriends I didn't meet.they all loved him; they were duped.He had two sons from his marriage to Barb but never saw them again after he divorced their mom. That, to me, was his worst crime. My brother had a wickedly brilliant sense of humor, and he could make people laugh.My own children adored their Uncle Gary, and a few months before he died at the age of 58, my family and Gary and his wife Virginia spent some time together in a rented house in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Amish country and Gettysburg fascinated him,and we got along for the most part, except he and I had one terrible argument over nothing really. It was just former baggage getting in our way.Stubbornness was a shared trait of ours. Anyway,we resolved that brouhaha and enjoyed ourselves. Al always got along well with my brothers and my Dad, and he stayed out of the fray, whenever a tempest would arise. After my brother Jim died in 1978, Gary dropped out of sight for over ten years. My parents lost two sons at once. Gary didn't resurface until a while after my mom died in 1989, so he wasn't at her funeral of course.When we did reconnect, he was already married to Virginia, and had pretty much used up her life savings.Oh, he was an addicted gambler too. That was his m.o., and she didn't seem to mind it.I am not proud of my brother's behavior, and his life really didn't have to be so inglorious. He burned a lot of bridges, and didn't show remorse. My sister was magnanimous and paid his funeral expenses. I admire her and her husband Jerry for that Act of Grace they showed to Virginia at the end. We kids, as I remember it ,had a pretty good childhood, and our annual family trips from 1959- 1967, are some of the fondest of my memories, but Gary 's immoral core and shameful actions were so diametrically opposite of the rest of the family.I am always befuddled by that, and my anger and shame towards him has yet to be fully resolved. May he rest in peace, and I pray for his soul, because I'm uncertain where or how he is spending Eternity.