The Galveston County Daily News

I read obituaries every morning, with my breakfast.

It doesn’t matter if I know the subject or not. Some of the local folk are known to me, but many aren’t. I seldom have heard of any in the Houston paper, yet I read many of them anyway. They’re interesting accounts of lives lived and loves shared.

Our journalism teachers always said, “If you can’t do anything else right, at least don’t make any mistakes on the obits. It’s their last chance.” I told that to every budding reporter I ever supervised.

I’ve read many, many laudatory dissertations on the lives of people. But until May 6, I had never read any that broke my heart. There in this paper were two, for a mother and son. I want the surviving brothers/uncles to know I mean no disrespect, but I’d like to share them with you as a story of pure love.

Graveside services for Rose Delores Brookshire and her son, Charles Allen Garrett, were held May 7 at the Port Bolivar Cemetery. They lived on Bolivar. They died on Bolivar Sept. 12, as Hurricane Ike sent waters over their land.

The information about Delores said she was born at St. Mary’s in Galveston in 1937 and went to school in Port Bolivar and then to Stephen F. Austin Junior High and Ball High School.

She left school early because of terrible headaches, but worked in the family business at Jones Grocery near the North Jetty. She traveled with her father to East Texas to cut cane poles. She worked at Milt’s Seafood House and McDaniels’ Grocery Store. Except for a time in Freeport, she lived most of her life on Bolivar Peninsula. Her husband, parents, grandparents and most of her siblings preceded her in death.

I’m betting that everybody who lived on Bolivar knew her.

Her only child was Charles Allen Garrett, who was born in Freeport in 1966.

His obituary relates that he began to develop agoraphobia at an early age. It reported, “Charles lived with his mother and supported her very strongly in his world of uncertainty. Even through his agonizing illness, there were many times he became his mother’s crutch.”

Charles left school early, but self-educated himself at home. He recited Bible scriptures and had an uncanny knowledge of science and word usage. He liked to talk science with his uncle, but he could also readily converse about sports and was a big fan of the Rockets, Astros and Dallas Cowboys.

I read both these sad obituaries early one morning and thought about them several times during the day, mostly because they were published in May about deaths that happened in September.

Then I thought about agoraphobia and realized the strong significance of the whole story. People who suffer agoraphobia can’t go outside their own homes. They must keep to their personal space. And so Charles couldn’t flee from the storm. And the mother who loved him wouldn’t leave him.

Cathy Gillentine is a columnist for The Daily News. She may be reached at cgillentine1(at)sbcglobal.net.