I miss you Kieron, and I need you bro, our talks...I'm so sick and tired of not having you

This is your last year? No more thanksgivings, or christmases - selfishly, I hope they're wrong.

If I'm in your beautifully selfless shoes, I hope otherwise - that maybe this awful outlook should become...

You wouldn't want this...this pathetic form of "life", rather this non-life that who knows how has fallen upon you.

It's cowardice not going down there. But I can't look at it anymore. I'm not leaving you high and dry bro - you wouldn't want me or anyone to see you like this. You didn't know self-pity, ever, and you wouldn't ever want me or anyone else to pity you either. You'd spit at this.

So let this wretchedness go away.

Thanksgiving: hard to imagine what I give thanks to...but at this moment it's thanking you for being the brother who I love in every strecth that that word encompasses...

eff the nightmares...what I hope to dream about tonight is one of those times we shared that were utterly perfect. There's nothing I wouldn't give to have just an afternoon like the ones we shared.

1:30 am

6 hrs before the 3rd race in your name, and although I'm grateful for all the showing of support, I'm listless. It's also the eve of OU/TX and normally we'd be pumped this morning, hanging, figuring out how to get inside Fair Park...

I'm tired of you not being here. It's so easy to say I miss you, but so hard for me and everyone else who knew you to understand why you're gone. It's why we made this race I guess.

But when I really reflect, it's helpless. I, helplessly, want you back. Cards of life suck sometimes...

I love you.

Twins

A day and week before the 3rd Kieron Go Bragh 5k...more importantly, the day OF the beginning of not one, but two new lives of the Finnegan clan.

In about 6 hours, Suzanna Finnegan-Guyton, the youngest of us six, is due to give birth to twins - Henry Finn and Juliet. Kieron would write something unique about this phenomenal morning...and relish that his baby sister, later this morning, was to become a mother.

I miss Kieron's unusual thoughts on special occasions like this. Through his quirky writings and offbeat comments, what always lay underneath was something compelling and uncommonly insightful. He'd say something like how special this monumental time was because of how Suzanna has come full-circle as the baby of the family, and into the nurturing mother we all knew she'd be... mind you Kieron would write this in much more capturing rhetoric.

I'm five years older than Suzanna. Kieron is five years older than me. My son, Patrick, is five years older than my youngest daugher, Emma. Often I watch my two youngest interacting and it brings me back to Suzanna and I years ago. I remember being proud to be her big brother... but never so much as I am now. My little sister will be a mom by this time tomorrow and I'm overjoyed...for her, for her husband Jon, for all of us - including Kieron. I think the timing is perfect.

Preparations for the the 3rd annual Kieron Go Bragh (2009) have begun and it looks like the race has found a new home - Frisco! Frisco is home to not only my family and Christine's, but also the new home my mom and brother Damon.

It's mid-August as I write, no doubt Kieron's favorite time of year as it's the dawning of another football season...his faves were Notre Dame (excpet when he attended SMU in early 80's) and the Cowboys. Don't know that he would like the upcoming inaugural kick-off at Dallas' new state-of- the-art facility...Kieron liked old school. Part of our bond was sealed watching the Cowboys play at Irving's Texas Stadium. Sounds like typical armchair quarterback talk, but we were passionate fans....young, having fun, and not knowing days like those, spent together cheering fervishly for our Cowboys, were numbered.

Picks has completely riddled Kieron's mind these days. Noone knows for sure even when the disease set in...but it's obvious to me and the few that see Kieron frequently that he's at the latter stages. He's but a shell of the vibrant, uniquely colorful and insightful person we all grew up with and admired.

But I've written enough about the tragic facet of it all, the unfairness...life's cards are mysterious and often as unfair as Goliath, but the backbone of the foundation and the 5k is built upon fighting for a cure and I want for this space to focus on raising awareness about the disease.

Kieron's family, this race, has as its focus to grow numbers and in turn dollars fighting against this cognitive brain disease known as Pick's. And so our efforts are concentrated on making the 3rd Kieron Go Bragh Foundation again bigger than the last.

Good night bro...i used to not think it a good idea but I will make sure that you are present at this year's race. And I look forward to seeing you at the finish line.

r u awake?

Wondering if Kieron is awake grasping any memory he might have, and if so if perhaps it's a memory of him and me.

A recent one occured 10 days ago on his 48th birthday, when the two of us and our mom celebrated the special occasion eating his cake, and drinking a cold beer. He didn't/couldn't say a word but flashed several smiles. No doubt he was happy and although his disease makes these types of moments fleeting, it was special.

Noone knows how much we need him these days. What is Picks? How/why is he one of the few?

Kieron

3 months after the Kieron Go Bragh run and only now do I write about what a great success it turned out to be...

But it was only a race, and though the cause is so very worthwhile, my brother falls deeper into the dregs of this dreadful disease.

Kieron Finnegan is special. Ask me how special and I'll gladly tell anyone with an interest. Though a shell of his essence, he remains special. Embedded in my heart - and I curse the day his true essence came to a halt - is how special he is.

I love you Kieron. I never told you how much I love you. We never told each other. But we lived it, and shared it, didn't we. And I miss you. I'm sorry.