Dear Brother

Dear Brother,


You died on this date several years ago.  I don't know how many years because I avoided reading your obituary, death certificate or anything else that might provide a cleaned up account of your existence or lack thereof..  I'm not actually sure this is the correct date for that matter.  It was the third week in June, that's as close as I can get.

I don't know how else to start except to scream: I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

I spent most of my childhood not saying or thinking this because it was wrong to hate someone.  I hated you for how you treated me.  I hated you for scaring me all the time.  I especially hated you for locking me in that big wooden box under your bed.  You were flat out one of the meanest people I've ever known.  I don't think childhood hatred is really hatred, or even an absence of love.  I think it was just the strongest word I knew to use for how helpless and angry you made me feel.  But you know what I  actually, really, truly hated about you?  I hated that not once, in 30 some odd years of being my older brother did you  ever stand up for me or protect me in any way.  Not once.   I hated you for repeatedly taking advantage of the blind trust I had in you.

As we both became adults, I tried to let go of all of this.  I at least tried to get over it.  I tried to be your friend.  I was so happy when you had children, I think I saw it as a way for you to redeem yourself somehow.  Or maybe it was to redeem me.  I tried to listen to you and be on your side when you got divorced.  I swore to you to protect your children if something ever happened to you.  When you got so sick, I sent you all the money I could as a college student so you could afford your medicine.  I found you places to stay when you came to see the kids.  I kept you apprised of how they were doing.  I ran interference between you and other family members.  I did everything I knew to take of you.  That was how I loved you.

You were a sick and distressed  man.  I know you were in pain, hurting and confused.  I know you did not want to be a burden.   I blamed myself for years for not doing more for you.  I hated myself for not answering those last phone calls.  It took many years and still it is hard for me to believe I couldn't have saved you if I had tried harder.  I would have done anything to help you if you had let me.

I am so incredibly hurt and angry to this day about your curtain call.  I need to understand but know that I never will.  I don't know what to tell your children when they are grown and ask about their father.  I don't know what to say to the families of my friends when they take the same exit.  All I can do is cry with them and hope that somehow I can show them that there is still life left in them and that death is not the end.

I've done everything you have ever asked me to do.  I have done everything to be the aunt/father to your children that you can no longer be.  I've failed miserably,  but I did do my best.  I like to think that if you were still here we would have been friends.  Or at least that you would be proud of me and finally approve of me.

For the first three years I thought about you thousands of times a day and dreamed about you every night.  I was shocked one day to realize you weren't everywhere in my mind.  But without fail on your birthday, Christmas, anytime we have a new baby born into the family,  a grandparent passes away, or the third week in June, I turn into a person I am afraid to be.  The depth of my sorrow seems like a wide gaping mouth ready to swallow me.  I don't understand how I still feel this way after so many years.  I don't understand why you still haunt my dreams.  I don't even know I've dreamed about you until I wake screaming.   I don't know what else to do to make myself back into who I was. I don't even know if that is who I really want to be.   You shattered my world and I hated you for it.

I've stomped on your grave and cursed you.  I've screamed until I had no voice and cried until I had no tears.  I have wrestled the devil, God, and everything in between trying to understand. There is a huge emptiness inside me for a brother who was never what I needed, but that I am afraid I learned too late how to love.

I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.