Brother

I’m trying to get caught upon my blog posts. My apologies to my faithful readers. I’m actually participating in Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where you write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, and it’s coming along well, but it has meant sacrificing on some other things, including making sure I get a daily post up in this blog. I’m in the home stretch and set to make the goal, but you have probably noticed that posting is infrequent and a lot of my entries are shorter.

So, onto today’s topic:

The thing that struck me about the epitaph on this stone was the flexible meaning of the word “brother” in our culture. The primary assumption I would make is that the monument was erected by the siblings of Jedediah Southworth. But there are lots of ways to be siblings – full, half, step-, or adoption. We also use “brother” as a term to indicate close emotional ties that might not be mappable to a future geneaology. Our fellow soldiers are our brothers in arms. We may decide as children to be become blood brothers. We use the term for fictive kin, for friends so close they become our chosen family.