Thomas Blosser - in memoriam

Tom, my brother, had died of a heart attack last night, my father said. The finality was jolting when my father called with the news on Friday, March 24th. The next morning, my wife and daughter and I packed up and headed down to Birmingham, where Tom had been living the last twenty years. We were not quite sure what to expect, since Tom had virtually dropped off the face of the earth after the death of his wife in 1987. He had called once or twice, but he left no forwarding address, and no telephone number where he could be reached. We didn't even know he was living in Birmingham. Apparently, he never quite regained his footing after Wendy died.

The obituary in The Birmingham News gave only the following spare details for Thomas Yoshiro Blosser the following Monday morning:

BLOSSER, THOMAS YOSHIRO, Accomplished local musician, Thomas Yoshiro Blosser, died suddenly of natural causes on Thursday, March 23, 2006. Born November 3, 1951, in Muroran, Japan, he became a naturalized US Citizen, was married to the late Wendy Holcombe, and is survived by his adoptive father, Eugene, and siblings, Philip, Rachel and Meiko. Memorial Services will be held on Monday at 2:00 p.m. at Charter Funeral Home, 621-0800. Published in The Birmingham News on 3/27/2006.

These few sentences, of course, do not begin to fathom the story of Tom's life; nor can I, for that matter, in the brief compass of this post. But the story begins long ago in Japan. Read the rest of the story here.