Treasured Memories of my Brother, "Johnny"

All evening on the day that my brother Johnny died... my wife, youngest daughter, and I gathered and went thru family albums — pictures from the many times we shared with him. From that, EjP came up with this collage that she made of her favorite snapshots of Johnny over the years, my sister Nanci wrote this blog and came up with this tribute, and I created the multimedia presentation on YouTube that you can watch by clicking on the picture below.

In this picture Johnny and I are at "Red Rocks" — on the corner of his property in Ontario where the Canadian Mississippi river makes a sharp bend around solid granite boulders. On this homestead where Johnny and Lorraine lived during the 90s, we would hike or canoe to "Red Rocks" to hang out, appreciate nature, have bonfires, and just watch the river flow. This picture — one of my favorites — shows me and my family hiking down to "Red Rocks" with Johnny and Lorraine when my children were young. We also dove off those rocks into the depths — but not very often because the Mississippi River was pretty cold, there, most of the year.

The sound track from Johnny's "in memoriam" slide show comes from the "Elderly Father to Son" video detailed in my blog where I allude to the foreshadow of losing Johnny. I tracked down a collaborator on that video, in Japan, and he (skutflut) helped me to find these lyrics + haunting melodies which — in my mind — have become synonymous with the sad time period of Johnny's last days. Hence, my "Multimedia Tribute To John Hickey" which I proudly present in memoriam in his honor. The pictures-only counterpart is also available as a Flickr slide show or Album.

Go, fly in the wind with our sister, Gaye, dear brother; your spirit will always live on in my heart.