And then there were four

Most of you are familiar with my family, including Bucky, Tardist, and Timmy (who has no blog of his own). There is one other sibling who’s not been in the talk here in blogland. He’s our older brother, JD.

JD was the eldest of the five of us. He willingly and graciously welcomed me, Tardist, Timmy, and Bucky into the family with no jealousy or rivalry. There was an age gap of almost 3 ½ years between him and me. Because of this he was always just a bit removed from the rest of our rowdy, Irish bunch.



There is musical and artistic talent running through our family. But, hands down, we all agree that JD had the most musical talent. He started piano lessons in second grade. By sixth grade he was learning to play the huge pipe organ at church. When he was eleven he got his first electric guitar.

Soon after, he started a rock group called the Rockets. He played lead guitar, one of his buddies played rhythm guitar, and another played drums. Their music was mostly Beach Boys and Beatles. And they were good.

Moving to Michigan at age 14 was hard for him because he had to leave his band behind. Before moving he had been in his high school band playing saxophone. This was one way could find a connection over that long-distance move.



He also discovered sports. He was a good athlete. Football and track were his main sports through high school. In his senior year he even joined the baseball team. As his younger, male siblings got older he started let them join him in the neighborhood sports he’d play.

I suppose because of practical reasons, he got a business degree in college. But before long he was working in bands again. Not long after college he moved to Texas for his music. But eventually he wound up in San Francisco.



He had an apartment in a building that was probably, originally, a single-family home. He had the upstairs apartment and the garage/basement. The garage/basement was where his computerized keyboard equipment was. He continued writing and recording songs (an audioblog of one of his songs is included at the end of this post), but made his living from composing and recording music that was background for videos, commercials, and movies.

JD was occasionally doing some gigs during that time period. In fact, he was playing a New Year’s party, almost twelve years ago, when all the feeling went out of his legs and he collapsed.

We received the call the next day that he’d gone to the hospital and they found out that he had cancer. He started receiving chemo and had a rough time of it for a while. Four and a half years later Ichabod and I went over to visit him. Because of the placement of the tumor he still had trouble controlling his legs. He described his walk as looking like he was drunk.



He kept fighting it and the cancer finally went into remission. We were all so thrilled. Then one Christmas Kathy, the stepmother of his downstairs neighbor, came to visit her. Kathy and JD ended up talking all night long. They were so compatible in so many ways. One thing they had in common was that he’d battled cancer and she had very bad lung disease. She lived in Iowa and the phone bills were getting ridiculous. They decided to marry soon and on May 1st, in San Francisco, they got married. He actually moved from San Francisco to her home in Iowa. We knew it had to be love. Well, you couldn’t miss it. The honeymoon never ended for them.

Life was good until JD’s cancer came back again. He was already into health foods and alternative health methods. He tried a lot of things before agreeing to chemotherapy again.

A bone marrow transplant was going to be his cure. No one in our family was compatible to donate but there was someone on the registry list who was a perfect match. The bone marrow procedure was supposed to happen the end of October 2003.

But something went wrong in September. His legs and arms started to swell. JD had already gone from being a big, muscular, athletic guy to very, very slim because of the cancer. When he began to swell like that it showed right away. The doctors weren’t able to reverse it.

On October 20th, 2003, he was lying in the hospital, sick and in great pain. He seemed to be holding on. He wasn’t letting go. When Kathy, reluctantly but lovingly, told him it was okay, he went. Two months before his 51st birthday he left the pain and this life behind. And our love still goes out to him.

We miss him.



Make Believe - composed, arranged, and performed by JD, circa early 1980s.