Shocked Beyond Words
It Wasn't Suppose To Happen This Way
On May 6, 2016, our youngest brother, Richard, passed away. He was a young 55 years old, but cancer plays no favorites. Each year on this anniversary, so many memories of him growing up flood my mind. I have recorded some of these memories here to honor him.
We miss you, Richard. Always in our hearts, brother.
My phone rang while I was waiting in line to pick up the kids after school.
Alarm set in as soon as I looked at the caller ID. I could not remember the last time my brother had called me, particularly in the middle of a weekday afternoon. It wasn’t that we weren’t close. We just didn’t do a lot of talking on the phone.
Richard was a tug boat captain for a large marine construction company.
At the time he called me, he was supposed to be on a job site in New York Harbor. His shift was one month on/one month off. I was always jealous of that.
Having been in the workforce for close to 50 years at that point, I had never come close to a schedule with that much time off at any given time.
Well, except for one time when I was laid off. But, that’s another story.
He was the youngest of five, a good-looking blue-eyed, towhead kid.
Being eight years older than him, most of my memories centered around his early life, before I left home to travel the world, courtesy of the Navy.
Richard was kindergarten age when we moved to Mt. Pleasant, at that time a small coastal village in South Carolina that sat atop a high bluff, overlooking Charleston harbor.
We would spend long periods at our family place on a large tidal creek on Edisto Island. So he literally grew up near or in the water.
In the Summers, the joke was that his standard attire was simply a bathing suit and ski belt.
He was diagnosed in grade school with severe reading dyslexia, which at that time was not highly understood.
While the dyslexia hindered his “formal education”, from early on he became very proficient with anything having to do with boats and water.
With his affinity for boats and water and an intuitive understanding of engineering, he naturally gravitated toward a career in marine construction.
Richard was always the lovable little kid.
Curious about everything, he was constantly asking questions about how or why things worked.
Funny, how two specific memories of him growing up stand out.
One was a story our mom told so often that it became a family favorite.
Soon after we moved to Mt. Pleasant, Richard discovered that the church a block down the street ran a kindergarten.
He saw all the kids out on the playground and decided he wanted to join them.
According to mom, Richard “went down there and enrolled himself” in the kindergarten.
She had a knack for embellishment at just the right times, so this story took on a life of its own.
The other memory happened a couple of years after our move.
Growing up, probably the most anticipated time of year was Christmas.
Like most kids, we would hardly sleep all night waiting to get up early and bound down the stairs to see if “Santa” had brought what we asked for.
This one Christmas, though, we discovered that Richard didn’t have any problem sleeping at all.
He had asked for a new sleeping bag that year.
When we went down to the living room, Richard was snuggled down in his new sleeping bag, fast asleep on the floor.
For some reason, that story grew legs of its own and became bigger than life as well.
Those were the thoughts that instantly flooded my memory when I answered my phone that day.
I heard his distinct blend of guttural Lowcountry and lyrical Charlestonian accent,
“Hey Corky, it’s Richard.”
“Hey Richard, what’s goin’ on?”
I didn’t know what I would hear, but whatever it was, I dreaded hearing it.
He just came out with it.
“Well, I have been diagnosed with stomach cancer. The doctor was pretty clear with me that it was too advanced for treatments to curb or cure it.
She gave me one to three months at most.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was the youngest.
I teared up. All I managed to say was, “Oh Richard”.
My voice failed me.
Eventually, I recovered from the shock enough to ask some questions.
He said that there was an experimental treatment program that his doctor had tried to get him into, but his cancer was too far advanced for him to qualify.
A little over a month later, his funeral service was held on our dock on Edisto.
One of his best friends was a woodworker and had made a special box for his ashes. It was a work of art.
After the service, at his request and true to his nature, his ashes were scattered over the outgoing tide.
Back to the water he loved so much.
Since we did not live close, Susan and I were only able to see him once before he passed, though we did talk on the phone more often than we ever had in the past.
We asked him if he had made his peace with God. If he knew Jesus had died for his sin?
He said that he had.
God loves us more than we can comprehend. He knows our hearts. We would have to leave it there.
Richard Elliott Hutson.
Remembering is to love and honor . . .
Hey there. I'm Cork Hutson, a retired Naval Cryptologist and DOD Intelligence Professional. As a Christian thinker, adventurer, and storyteller, I spend my days writing two Substack newsletters from a Christian worldview.
At the The Talking Pen I write stories that warm your heart, sharpen your mind, and deepen your faith
Life UnCorked is where I publish articles about the many lessons I've learned over the years on Faith, Retirement, Money, Travel, Writing, and life in general.
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