Remembering Rog
Notes from the Prairie: I Wonder # 8
Roger Addink on his motorcycle.
In memory of Roger Addink, May 31, 1953 — January 1, 2025
My cell phone rings in my always-worn-at-home fanny pack. I answer. “Marv!” The oldest of my three surviving brothers doesn’t call often.
His voice raspy, he says, “Hi, sister.” And then he adds, “Rog passed this afternoon.”
“Oh…”
That moment and this phone call have been inevitable since my brother Roger’s sarcoma diagnosis nine years ago. A football-sized tumor. “I thought I was a dead man,” he told our family, smiling and shaking his head after a surgery and successful recovery. But, in the way of many cancers, it returned. And returned.
With surgeries and medications, he lived a mostly normal and pain-free life for those nine years, until a steeper downhill path in recent months.
His inner life was private those nine years, just as the 62 years that preceded them. He once told cousin Gene that if it were not for his extroverted wife, Alice, and his children, he would probably be a hermit in the hills somewhere far from civilization. Solitary and content.
Rog often called himself an introvert. He claimed it as an identity and a self-defense, just as our mother had claimed an inferiority complex as hers. But, different from her, he did not wield it to achieve power.
He was frank about his disease and destiny, mostly through humor, sometimes shocking me with jokes about his cancer. Alice explained for both of them. “What are we going to do? We can’t just sit around and mope all day, eh?”
In his last months he was eager for his heavenly destiny, and he said that often. When his final months under hospice lasted longer than projected, he emailed his siblings that God must have a reason for keeping him here. When hearing of his passing, our cousin Nancy remarked, “I never knew anyone as eager for heaven as Rog.”
He was born the fourth of his seven siblings. I was the oldest, followed by three boys. Mother loved the story that when he was born I refused to look at him. I had wanted a baby sister. Eventually I relented. Especially when two sisters and then a fourth brother followed.
Responding to his passing, one relative who knew his heart better than I did, remarked, “He always had an opinion, but most of the time I was with him, he went along with others’ ideas without complaining. What I admired in him was his ability to follow the path that he felt he needed to go, even if others felt it was wrong. He was a pleasure to be around. He was good company.”
Those comments brought into focus the fuzzy vision of an older sister. How do I remember this third brother? I remember:
A student athlete, who loved the demands and sweat of long-distance running, who thrilled to the competition of hard-fought basketball.
A keen mathematician who frustrated his math professors by rarely showing up for classes and then acing the tests.
A competitive card player who remembered what each person at the table had played, and in what order, just as well as his brothers did. They would, of course, take issue with my statement.
A muscular bricklayer in his thirties, who looked at his future as a married father of multiple children and returned to college to complete an engineering degree.
An empty-nester with a zest for new crafts and hobbies: tatting, crocheting, 3-D magnetic bead sculptures, and in retirement crafting bowls from rescued tree trunks. As he weakened, he gave that up and learned to fly stunt kites.
His pleasure in in long motorcycle rides, both solitary and with others.
I also remember a sophomore college student, coming to my apartment, broken hearted over a breakup with his first love. “She didn’t understand insults,” he said, tears in his eyes. He viewed jocular insults as a form of humor. She couldn’t.
I confess, I couldn’t either. That part of our clan culture puzzled me. Once, on a walk together during an adult family gathering, he teased me about setting a fast pace. “Oh, yes, Carol, you pretend to be superior and noncompetitive. But you are just as competitive as the rest of us.”
Pretend to be superior? It hurt. But I smiled.
Remembering Rog, one of our clan remarked, “He didn’t have a mean streak in his body, but he was a little naïve about how his humor was received by others.” Looking back, I realize it was not Rog’s purpose to hurt me. He meant his comment as a teasing joke.
He joked to the end. When his daughter Gwen called Marv with the news of Rog’s passing, she said that Rog was joking with a couple of his children and started coughing. Then he took two long breaths, and he was gone.
“It is probably what he wanted,” I say to Marv. “Long, tearful goodbyes would have been difficult for him.” Perhaps impossible.
I remember his last goodbye to me as we parted ways after a bittersweet family reunion last summer. Bittersweet because we knew it was his last.
We stood outdoors at sister Kathy’s lake home. Before he stepped into his car, we hugged. He paused, then looked in my eyes and said new words, “I love you.” A first.
I said them back. Also a first.
As he and Alice drove away, I knew we had just said our final goodbye.
We were siblings, and there was love.
It was enough.
Carol Van Klompenburg is a writer living in Pella, Iowa. She has a BA in English and an MA in Theater Arts — and is available for reading performances of her work.
Free sample chapters from a just-published book, A World in a Grain of Sand: Lively Little Stories of Household Stuff, are available simply by emailing Carol a request. She’d love to send them to you, no obligation: carolvk13@gmail.com. The complete book is available in Pella from her or from the Curiosity Shop in Pella. Or it can be ordered from Amazon.
Readers are calling it “stirring,” “winsome,” and “delightful.”
Sorry, Carol,about this sad loss. Rob sounds like a wonderful brother. Wonderful memories you shared.
Thank you for this insight into your brother, and into you. Family love is often either complicated or taken for granted, and it is obvious that the two of your figured it out. I rejoice with your brother in reaching heaven, his ultimate goal.