- In loving memory of Bill McLemore.
Thanksgiving Day brings the clatter of dishes, the gathering of family and friends, conversations of catching up, and sweet and savory aromas that arouse our memories for years to come. But for many, there may be a sorrowful silence.
This year, our table has a new empty chair. My older brother, Bill, passed away just weeks before this Thanksgiving. His absence feels sharp and too soon. He wasn’t loud or attention-seeking, but his presence added a great deal of delight to the dialogue we shared as siblings.
As a child, he had a passion for learning — preferring encyclopedias and dictionaries over fantasy novels or murder mysteries. He gained a deep understanding of the world as a teenager, sensing the unrest of the 1960s we grew up in — the rumble of war, political upheaval, and the cry for equality and identity. I believe he already felt that rumbling within himself. For most of his life, Bill lived with schizophrenia.
While attending Mississippi State University, Bill thrived. He accomplished so much and was close to completing his degree when his first manic episode occurred around age 20. From there, his path grew harder — for him, and for us. He was in and out of institutions, private and state, and spent most of his adult life choosing the streets over medication. It’s a story we see too often in many confronting chronic mental illness.
During those years, Mom, my sister Robyn, and I would try to find him — in New Orleans, in Memphis, and eventually back in Meridian, where he continued the street life he had come to know. We planned our visits around the AA meetings at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, hoping he’d be there. Bill didn’t have a drinking or a drug problem, but AA became his support system. He felt comfortable, accepted, at home, there. We’d wait in the parking lot, talk to him briefly, try to coax him into coming with us, to get something to eat, and just to talk — but he always refused. Eventually, we accepted that this was all we could have of him: a few minutes in the parking lot and a glimpse of the brother we loved.
That changed a little over 15 years ago, when we were able to get him into a facility through the court system. New treatment gave him a renewed connection to family and to the world that consistently fascinated him. He loved SEC football, Mississippi State, classic rock, and the mysteries of the cosmos. He knew every mission of the U.S. space program and longed to travel among the stars one day.
The three of us (Mom, Robyn, and I) often drove to see Bill at his facility in Laurel, before he relocated a little over a year ago to a facility in Meridian, where I live, and where he passed away on November 8. During our visits to Laurel and Meridian, he reminded us that the world was beautiful, despite its many flaws, and that life didn’t need to be complicated. “Keep it simple,” he told us.
Bill found delight in every little thing, like our visits, the Big Mac meals we brought him, Cokes and chips, and a game of Bingo. Everyone who knew Bill loved him because he genuinely cared for people, especially those who struggled within themselves, and treated them with the utmost respect. He always saw the good parts and believed that the good outweighed everything else. His compliments were frequent and free, always genuine, because he also saw the beauty as well as the good in everyone. What a rarity.
Now this precious human is gone.
But even in sorrow, we witness God’s design, as constant as the earth’s orbit. There is always pain in saying goodbye, but peace comes in trusting our loved ones are with Him, illuminated in a light that never fades. I believe that Bill, with his fascination for the stars, is finally among them, soaring on a shuttle of his own.
The first holiday after a loss is rarely peaceful. We feel anything but joyful. And though we still gather in November, grief doesn’t pay attention to the calendar. Like fog, it seeps in and curls around the corners to dim our happiest holiday traditions. The empty chair, the missing voice at the table, the familiar smile— they are all holes the special day can’t fill.
However, we somehow find celebration in what our loved one left us—our memories and lessons learned from our special person. In that is Thanksgiving.
I give thanks for my sister, Robyn, my best friend in life, whose strength, faith, and grace — even after losing her 16-year-old son, and now her brother — continue to astound me.
I give thanks for my mother, who at 92 still radiates the fruits of lifelong faith, even in the pain of losing her oldest child. I’m so thankful for the time the three of us spent together searching for Bill until we found him—and he found us.
And for my husband, Tim, who never left Bill’s side until his final breath, while Robyn and I were miles away with our mother after her emergency pacemaker surgery.
I’m thankful for the childhood years the Lord gave us with my brother Bill, years of playing together, protecting each other, fighting, and then forgiving each other. I’m even more grateful for the later years, when we saw the wisdom, generosity, and empathy he had gained during the time we lost him. Through Bill, we were able to see the world differently. He helped us see those who are mentally ill and emotionally wounded not as broken or separate, but as deeply human — their lives shaped by battles we could not see. Bill gave us the gift of seeing that love is …simple.
We do not heal by forgetting. We heal by remembering. So, if your heart feels heavy this Thanksgiving, you are not alone. Allow mine to sit with yours and let us remember together. In the silence left by those we’ve lost, may we feel the hushed presence of God — holding us, guiding us, and reminding us that love never ends with goodbye because it lasts a lifetime. And though it sounds too simple, I’ve learned to take and cherish my brother Bill’s advice. “Keep it simple.”
Richelle Putnam
