Random Thoughts

My brother passed away last month, and it has caused me to reflect on life in general. He and I had not been close in many years. He had a severe drinking problem and it made it difficult to remain close to him. I always think of him, however, as my big brother...the hero I remember as a young child. I looked up to him quite strongly while growing up, and knew he would always protect me.

It is sad to say, his choices in life took away most of his ability to be a hero...especially to himself. But it got me to thinking about the choices we all make in life. It also got me to thinking about perception. How others view us vs. how we view ourselves. He always viewed himself as a character out of a 40's or 50's movie...the Humphrey Bogart type...even wearing the old style hats from that era. I'm in my 50's now, mostly gray hair, more than a few extra pounds, nowhere near the stamina I used to have, but the "inner me", the one I picture when I think of myself, is still this strong, biker type with thick black hair, a quick smile, and the ability to do anything he sets his mind to.

The random thought I want to talk about right now, though, is: Why do we choose support systems that are guaranteed ultimately to fail?

This is exemplified by my brother's choices. He used alcohol as his crutch. It got him through the day. It gave him courage and eliminated his insecurities. We gew up in a different time...a time when men weren't supposed to be "sensitive", weren't supposed to ask for help, never admitted they had weaknesses. That has certainly changed over the last few decades, with the 80's becoming the decade where sensitivity in men was the new "sexy". But back in the 50's and early 60's, that was certainly not the case. My brother was not a large man, at his peak in his late teens early 20's he was 5' 8" and about 130 pounds, but the "inner" man was huge. He would not back down from anyone. Always almost looking for a fight, he somehow seemed to think that he increased the world's view of his manhood by fighting. The problem was, he had so many inner demons, he spent most of his time fighting them, rather than maturing as an adult.

By the time he was 20, he drank often...at least several days a week. It became part of his personality. He was proud of it. He always denied that he had a drinking problem, assuring friends and family members that he just enjoyed it. But those of us close to him at the time saw the way it changed him. He mellowed in later life, but back then he was a mean drunk. He used to hit me when he's come home totally trashed, and as a teenager 4 years his junior, there wasn't much I could do about it at the time.

He had a good heart, though, when he was sober. He'd give you the shirt off his back (if he hadn't already pawned it to pay bills). He loved deeply when he was in a relationship, but the relationships never lasted very long, because his drinking made it impossible for him to grow and mature in a relationship. He still mourned the loss of his high school sweetheart even up to his death, as well as a woman he was involved with in the early 80's who he wanted to marry. He met a woman a couple of years ago and moved in with her and for a while I thought this might actually be what he needs to change...but, ultimately, you cannot find happiness in another, when you are not happy with yourself.

I know I am getting a little off topic here, but the above was necessary to understanding the point I am getting to. Everyone, at times, needs a crutch of some sort. Whether it be a friend's shoulder to lean on, a hobby, quiet time alone away from the cares of the world, religion, or a not-so-positive crutch like booze or drugs. I have come to realize as I have aged, that no crutch, if it becomes the sole way of getting through life, is a good thing. Even the positive ones.

The problem is, when we use something to help us get through our problems, it makes it difficult if not impossible for us to address those problems. Especially with drugs and booze. No matter how hard our life is, no matter how much pain we are in, the drugs (and booze is a drug as well) make us feel ok for a while. It becomes much easier to ignore what caused us the pain in the first place. Even positive crutches can become self-defeating. If we always rely on something or someone else to make us feel good in order to cope with tragedies or even just the mundane, day-to-day problems in our life, then we never truly learn to cope with them on our own.

This was ultimately the downfall for my brother. He had spent so many years hiding from the problems in his life, that he never really solved any of them and they haunted him until his last days. And the solution...the booze...took away any real chance he had at turning his life around and finding happiness. He was a brilliant artist, yet he failed at every job he had due to his drinking. He was highly intelligent, yet he was unable to think his way out of any of his predicaments, relying on booze to hide himself from the pain of his failures. He was a giving and loving man, who pushed away most of his friends and family because of the problems his drinking caused. I used to have him over for holidays when I was first married and my children were little, but he so often showed up intoxicated, sometimes with a drunk friend, that I had to stop inviting him over. He would tell vulgar jokes in front of the children, and lose his temper when I tried to get him to settle down. He did other things as well, some of them horrible, that I will not relate here in case my children read this.

Ultimately, he ended up spending 6 years in prison for bank robbery...having robbed 12 banks all while he was drunk. He was even worse once he got out of prison. Having always blamed his problems on anything he could think of other than himself, he blamed me for his spending time in jail. I convinced him to plead guilty and make some sort of deal with the state's attorney because the evidence they had against him was overhelming, but he was sure he could "outwit" them and get off. But he was facing 25 years for each count, which would have been a life sentance, so I pushed him until he agreed to plead out and was sentanced to 6 years. He blamed me for years for his time in jail.

I think when we face our problems, stand up to them, do what we can to fix them, accept our own responsibility for them, then we are able to get beyond them and they lose their affect on us. When we hide in booze or pills or even positive aids like friends and family to solve our problems, they never really go away. That is not to say that friends and family and God aren't positive, they are. They can help us in so many ways, but when we become dependant upon them to fix everything in our lives without putting forth effort ourselves and taking control of your mistakes and owning up to them, then we never develop the ability to truly cope with hard situations and end up turning to our "crutch" whenever things don't go right, whether that crutch is booze, or your mother, or your wife, or your career.

When we do this, we ultimately take away our own power. We become subject to the ability of our friends or family or the booze or the pills to solve everything. But when we wake up in the morning, there we are. We haven't grown from the experience because someone or something else got us through it.

Ultimately, my brother realized this too late, and took his own life. A life that should have been so much more than it was. He could have had a family, children, a successful career. He could have contributed to society and been a support to his friends and family, instead of always needing support. I think that would have made him feel so much better about himself.

I am not trying to judge him, but rather to use his choices as an example of how we can ruin our lives without even knowing it by relying on others or booze to solve our problems. I loved my brother, even though I avoided him these last years. I let him live with me a few years ago for about one and a half years, until his drinking ultimately made it impossible to let him stay. I hardly saw him after that...almost two years and I think I only saw him twice. He called me the week before he died, but I didn't return his call. I think often now that if I had, maybe I could have sensed how badly he was doing and done something to help, but I figured if he was too bad off, his girlfriend would call me as she often did when things got bad. I wish now I had called. But, alas, as with many choices in life, there is no going back and doing a "redo". We have to accept that we screwed up and find a way to move on. I neither expected, nor wanted what happened, but now I have to live with it.

I miss him. I tried so often to get him to quit drinking so that we could begin to repair our relationship. I wanted so much to have my "big brother" back. The one I followed like a shadow until I was about 12 or 14. The one I always went to when I was little and had a problem. I miss that one so much.

I guess the lesson in all this is that we should not give in to the temptation to hide in anything to avoid dealing with life, because, ultimately, life will catch up to us and we definitely won't be able to deal with it then.

Goodbye, my brother. I pray you are happier now. We who you left behing, miss you a lot.