A tribute to my oldest brother

For those of you who read my blog and don't know, I have three brothers and a sister. When my oldest brother was 12, he died suddenly. I was around three at the time, and I don't have a lot of memories of him, probably just some imaginings of what people have told me about him. He's technically my half brother--he and my sister share a dad with my two other brothers and have different moms. To me, they're my brother and sister, I don't think there's really such a thing as a half brother or sister. Anyway, when he died, his mom insisted that Jimmy be cremated and his ashes spread in the ocean. For her own reasons, she also didn't want a grave marker, so unlike my grandpa, there's nowhere easy we can go to honor Jimmy and show my kids where he's laid to rest. The only tribute that he has is actually located at the Los Angeles zoo. His great aunt (I think) donated to the zoo when they were building the koala exhibit there in 1982 when he died, so there is a little medallion outside the exhibit that reads "James L Middough 1969-1982 * From all who loved him". Although I've known of the existance of this tribute, I've never seen it, there are just too many of these little medallions outside this exhibit to be able to go all over looking for it--you'd have to look through thousands of medallions from all the people that donated to the zoo then. This past weekend, while we were in Southern California visiting the kids, we decided to take them to the zoo. When we got to this exhbit, I was showing Jason and the kids all the medallions in the ground and telling them about Jimmy's medallion. Of course the kids though this was great and wanted to find it. As I was telling them how we'd never find it, I realized that I was looking right at it. So there we are in the middle of the zoo, and suddenly it's like I'm visiting his grave somewhere, and I began to cry. Luckily they had closed the koala exhibit that day, so there weren't a lot of people around us because it took me a little time before I was ready to go back to enjoying the kids and the day, but it was so nice to be able to find that. I'm grateful I got to show it to the kids and Jason--the kids even made us laugh. They couldn't understand why, if Cole is named after Jimmy, his middle name is James, not Jimmy. It's funny how you can miss someone that you hardly knew, but I miss him so much. I'm so grateful for the plan of salvation because one day I'll get to be with my brother again.