Rudy G Hoggard

A Sister and A Little Brother Rudy G Hoggard

"Why am I getting angry with God? I love God. Why do I doubt God's Word? I treasure His Word. Why is my understanding about life now more confusing? Why do I feel like life does not have any purpose anymore? A Sister and A Little Brother is a journey of embracing and healing over the death of a brother's son and his sister's daughter. Rudy Hoggard called his sister two days after his son was killed and stated, "You understand." Her daughter had died six years earlier. Hoggard's camaraderie with his sister employs family stories as he and sister, Pansy, travel this road of grief. Grief is real, overwhelming, full of unanswerable questions, challenging work, and consumes much energy. Hoggard said, "You think you are going crazy." Grief takes on anger with yourself, God, old friends, and even the child for dying. Rudy's friend, Ray Palmer who lost his wife, Dee, stated it best. "I want friends that hug, hush, and someone to hang out with." "I want friends that accept me, validate the pain, share my anguish where I am, and unhurriedly help me grow back to God's ideals with their wisdom, advice, and principles." Brother and sister find telling and restating the story of their loss helps in the healing. "You have no idea how the sound of a voice or the touch of a hand can bring comfort in a time like this," said Elliott White Spring, a South Carolina businessman and an American flying ace of World War I, whose son was killed in a glider accident at age 22. "There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were." President Dwight Eisenhower said after reflecting years later on the loss of his three-year-old son with scarlet fever in 1921.