Elizabeth Warren Instagram – My brother John passed away yesterday. In this photo we are together at Christmas in 1958. John had cancer for a long time, and finally it got him. He was at home, and he’d been strong enough to watch the football game on Monday (Dallas Cowboys, of course) with his son Mark. But he started going down sharply on Wednesday, then died on Thursday. John was the middle brother—the sweet one who was soft-spoken, shy, ready to help. He never seemed to understand how much he had going for him—tall, good-looking, a beautiful singing voice. Instead, he always ducked into the background. When I was little, he would carry me on his shoulders, even though he had to bend way down to make sure he didn’t crack my head on the door jambs. He joined the Air Force to fly planes like big brother Don Reed, but after basic training he was too tall to fit in the cockpit, so he spent his years of military service on the ground in California, Texas and Morocco. His wife Barbara was a brash, outspoken, stylish woman—big gestures, wicked observations, wildly funny. She always told him how much she loved him—loudly and directly. He’d look down and give a half-smile—while he positively glowed. Whenever he talked about Barbara, it was clear he thought he’d won life’s biggest prize. When she died 14 years ago, he never quite got over it. He’d play the records they had danced to and look at the pictures he kept of her on his mantle. I hope that John is now with his beloved Barbara. This has been a hard year and a half for so many people. The same day John died, another 2,744 people died from COVID. Families all across our nation have lost brothers, cousins, friends, parents, children—the list is too long to absorb. Almost no one is left untouched. The ache gets deeper, but so does the urgency to tell someone how much you love them—loudly and directly.