Adios to a good brother

Those of you who've known me for a while knew that I had a brother, Tom, living in the Cayman Islands. I remember relating his emails of blow-by-blow descriptions of Hurricane Ivan to my co-workers.

Tom was an artist, and like many artists, had a fatal character flaw: Tom was a drug user. While he wasn't a hard-core addict, he was an occasional user. Freinds and family have tried for years to get him to give up this habit as he had so much going for him - he was very talented and was genuinely one of the nicest people on the face of the Earth -- even if he was liberal .

On Monday, October 10th, Tom injected one time too many. We still don't know if it was an overdose or bad stuff or what exactly happened. He collapsed and died within minutes.

I'm torn between grieving for him and wanting one last chance to grab him by the neck and kick him in the ass for being so stupid.

I've always believed that recreational drug use was a matter left to one's own principles and thought that our current drug laws were Draconian. But, whether you're hard or soft on drugs and drug policies, there's no escaping one fact: drugs kill.

My brother's obituary and guestbook may be found online at http://www.legacy.com/Herald/LegacySubPage2.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=15377239