I drive through the “campground,” a small village of tarp-tents and dumpster-can fires. I search for you among a crowd of those who all look the same; tired, dirty, and cold. It is a community of the lost and lonely, covered by the cement overpass of a city who has forgotten you. Every year I give you gloves, a hat, a scarf, and some hand warmers hoping it will be enough to last you through the winter. I don’t want you to die from something I know I could have prevented. I am not sure I will ever forgive you and maybe this is punishment enough. All I know is that I wouldn’t wish this life upon anyone, especially my brother.
* * *
On January 24th 1977 my mother gave birth to my brother Shawn. She was only 18 and far from being ready to have a child, but she would seemingly figure everything out…she always has. His father is not my father. His father Michael married our mom, until she had the courage to leave. He was a liar, a cheater, and physically abusive. To anyone who knew him, he was clearly mentally unstable. He was selfish and had an addictive personality. She takes solace in knowing that the broken part of you most likely came from him. She gave you everything she had, she loved you unconditionally, but somehow your life seemed pre-determined. At the age of four she started to notice a change in your behavior. You were starting to do things that were not normal for a child. She told me a story about you taking the heads off of all our sisters’ dolls. While this appeared to be just “boy” play, it bothered her. It was violent. Your actions quickly escalated to violent play to violent actions. One day you tried to kill the family dog. Mom told me one day she had gone out the porch to find that you had pushed the golden lab off the side of the second story porch; his body swinging limp, hanging by his collar. She managed to pull him up before he suffocated to death. I think she was more scared than anything. After all, she had heard those stories about serial killers who develop lethal tendencies before they are even old enough to understand what they are doing. Your behavior was quickly spiraling out of control. Your actions weren’t conducive to a little boy. These were the cries of a child who was screaming for help.
She told me stories of when you were in kindergarten and would come home with a black eye. You started pushing kids around on the bus just because you could. Among the commotion you retaliated against a young boy. You told mom you were “protecting” yourself. She did not understand how a five year old could feel so much rage. How a five year old could hurt people who never once hurt him. The amount of anger you were expressing lucidly was disconcerting. I can’t imagine what mom was going through. She had no one to go to for help. She blamed herself. The school was constantly calling her to come get you, she was embarrassed and tired. Still a child herself, she did the best she could. She was trying to raise you normally, but there was psychologically nothing normal about you. As you got older it became more difficult to understand your psychotic demeanors and find ways to cope with them.
* * *
Around this time, she met our father James. She started putting you in counseling to make sure you were “okay” with the transition. Even from an early age you were diagnosed with severe anxiety and dual personality disorder. It caused you to have severe mood swings. One minute you were kind and gentle, the next you were swearing and threatening our parent’s lives. The counseling didn’t help, but regardless not many years later mom married my father. He adopted you and my oldest sister Kerry. When I was born I knew them only as my brother and sister, nothing less. Mom and dad did the best they could to suppress your psychotic tendencies. They treated you the same way we were treated. I think they believed in many ways this would help show you that we were no different. Even from a young age you only thought about yourself. Mom always said the world revolved around you; whether it was family dinner or Christmas. If the attention was not on you, you would find a way. Most of the time you would shift focuses through violence or angry outbursts. So violent to the point where we always had to leave and go to the neighbors house or go stay in our room because mom and dad we afraid of what might happen. I never understood why you acted so different.
* * *
Mom and I walk down town and discuss you. I was young when so much of your life came crashing down. You were already 12 when I was just born. The memories I do have are faint. They flash in my brain like a photo and as much as I try to put them all together into a movie, the scenes never fit. I remember things one way because mom and dad were protecting me from the truth, but now that I am older I yearn to understand so I can start to put the pieces together for myself. She tells me a story of you when you were a teenager. It was the only story she told me about before you had moved out for good. She began
“It was about a year before he left, he had given me a set of towels. I think it was for Valentine’s Day. They were dish towels with tiny hearts; he probably stole from the store. The next day when I woke up I saw him sitting on the kitchen floor cutting them with a large knife saying ‘“this is what is going to happen to all of us.”’
Again, I think she was scared more than anything. It was hard for her to understand the motives behind the things you did. How one day you would seem “normal” and the next day you were the complete opposite. You would give just as fast as you could take, that was your problem.
I hugged her and tell her I am sorry. She told me not to apologize for you. A large part of me always wants to apologize for you. In a ways it makes me feel like I am taking the blame away from them. They shouldn’t have to apologize for you.
* * *
My own memory of him began when he was already sixteen and I was only four. He towered over me as a child; I had no choice but to look up to him. He was handsome; a bit lanky, beautiful blue eyes, and dirty blonde, short hair. His voice was melodic and calming. My mother told me he used to sing in the school chorus, that he was a great singer. He played football, he was good. If he had continued with it I have no doubt he could have gone to college with a scholarship. He had a seeable future and attainable dreams, but life didn’t stay this way for long.
We grew up in Marlborough, Massachusetts; a small town slowly expanding into the city it is known for today. Our house was brown and old. The wooden siding on the house was slowly breaking apart. It was a broken house in many ways. Mom and dad couldn’t afford to buy one yet, so we were only renting. I remember there were three bedrooms. One was my parents, it was at the end of the hall and it was the smallest of the three. The other room was my brother’s, he was in-between my room and my parents’. I always remember wanting to sneak into his room. He had his own phone, one of the clear phones that you could see all the inner workings and a radio. He had posters of girls in bathing suits and your own television. All the things a 90’s teen could desire. I think I was most envious of the fact he had his own room. He was hardly home, he didn’t deserve it. My room was the first one at the top of the stairs, the biggest. I shared this room with three of my sisters. We had two sets of white, metal bunk beds. I loved those things, but every time one of us tossed or turned the other would wake up. Not to mention the ladder was a death trap if you had footie pajamas on. There were tiny closets, more like cubbies, that ran the length of the back wall; I used to love to play hide-and-go-seek in there. We had two sky lights, which I loved looking out at night. I remember everything being so simple; I remember being perfectly happy. The landlord seldom fixed our problems. Raccoons and squirrels would sometimes get into the chimney; my dad used to have to get the dog carrier from the basement and corner them into it. I always wanted to keep the animals that found their way in. He finally had to put a cement block on top of the chimney to prevent them from getting in. I drive by the house once and a while and notice that it is still there. Those were stories I love to remember. Other stories I seem to have forgotten, either because I chose to or because they have been recorded over with better memories.
* * *
Mom and I walk down the street and she begins to speak to me about an incident that happened when you were about 15. During your early teenage years you started to hang around with troubled kids. You started to smoke weed and drink beer. You were quickly on your way to a bad place. You started to sneak out and stay out for nights on end. She continued to tell a story about a time when someone shot at the front door of our house. “It wasn’t a bullet. I think it was a pellet. It cracked the glass.” I try to look back and remember and realize that I can’t. How could I not remember this? Although I am thankful for not having to relive these memories in fear, understanding what truly happened paints a very different picture of the person I knew as my brother. Someone had shot at the house because you owed them money. You took weed to sell and ended up smoking it yourself, a debt which you could not pay back.
I listen in awe and we keep walking. My heart becomes heavier and I become angrier. I cannot believe all that he has put our family through. We walk back to car and say out loud
“That is so fucked.”
“Yup, and that is not even the half of it” she says.
* * *
Being so young it was hard for me to understand this experience at the time, even now that I am older putting the pieces together has proven difficult. My parents always protected us from whatever was going on with my brother, I don’t remember much because I was not exposed to it. In many ways I am grateful for not being involved. It also pains me because I never truly knew my brother before he changed.
I recall one night after dinner I had been helping my sister Valerie wash the dishes. I remember it being dark outside, but I know it wasn’t too late. It had to have been October because the Halloween decorations we made at school lined each cabinet of the kitchen. We never had enough money to buy decorations. It never mattered that we didn’t have store bought decorations. The fact that mom and dad felt our artwork was worth more, made us feel special. We could also never afford Halloween costumes, but I remember Halloween always being my favorite holiday.
We would come home from school and quickly do our homework so we could get changed. We were always able to choose what we would dress up as and mom would find things to put the costume together. My favorite costume was a dog. Mom made it for me out of an old sweatpants suit and felt sheets. She meticulously cut out “ears” and glued them to one of my head bands. Small felt circles covered my black suit. Veolia, I was a Dalmatian. Dad would paint our faces, he was so artistic. Although my “dog spot” closely resembled a black eye, it was all for effect. I remember that paint being so itchy and smelling so horrid. It probably was not face paint. Mom would feed us a quick dinner and always put out cinnamon sugar donuts and apple cider before we left. They would take us to a neighborhood that was safe to walk in because we lived on a busy street. We would get home before dark. I think we were always the first ones out. We would get home and dump our pillowcases full of candy on the floor. I would count everything methodically and trade any candy I didn’t like. I never got to touch my candy after Halloween. My parent’s would ration it out as an after dinner treat and eventually just throw whatever was left over out. I always assumed they ate it because after a few weeks they would tell us it was gone.
* * *
“Ouch!” I feel you splash me with hot water as I stood on a wooden stepstool trying to reach the sink as best I could. I was yelling for my mom to make her stop. Mom told us to cut it out. I stuck my tongue out at her; she nugged me. Suddenly my brother walked through the door. “Where have you been?!” exclaimed my mother.
“None of your business,” yelled my brother.
I started to get nervous as voices got louder. My sister and I just stood there. I didn’t understand what was going on.
“This isn’t a hotel; you cannot come and go as you please. You need to leave” shouted my father.
My brother grabbed a pot from the counter and threw it at my parents as he screamed to my mother “you’re a bitch.”
Mom picked it up with tears in her eyes. I could tell dad was angry, angry enough to go after my brother. He looked at him as if he were trying to decide what he was going to do. Whether he was going to walk away or kill him. Everyone was just standing still. I am not sure anyone knew what to do. My dad told my sister to take me upstairs; she clutched my arm and took me out of the kitchen. I didn’t want to leave. I was afraid my parents were going to hurt him. I was scared and confused. From my room I heard more yelling and then the back door slam shut. The house was quiet again, but didn’t feel the same. This was the first time I remember him leaving and the last time he lived in our house. He was only 16.
He left because my mother and father could no longer deal with his behavior or lifestyle. When he was 15 he would sneak out, get in fights, and end up in jail. My parents decided to go through the legal system in search of help. The court determined the most effective course-of-action would be to place a “CHINS” (Child In Need of Service) order on my brother. This meant that the court would have to find grounds that my brother was involved in illegal activity and could therefore not be held responsible by my parents. He wouldn’t come home for days or weeks. They didn’t want to be at fault if anything happened to him while he was not in their care. The police came to the house after the court decided the CHINS was the preeminent strategy to gain some type of control over my brother. They needed proof of what he was involved in. Shawn was nowhere to be found and mom had my oldest sister Kerry take us to a family friends’ house. She recently told me the cops had found hundreds of dollars and a few bags of cocaine hidden in a school book of all places. The police believed he was selling it. A few days later the police found him at McDonald’s where he had worked at the time, he was immediately arrested. I know that my parents had no idea that was in our house. I believe my parents thought he was smarter than that. They couldn’t keep track of him; they couldn’t control him. Instead of fighting him, they protected us.
* * *
I sit on the couch at mom’s house and she brings out a box of old letters and cards we had given to her over the years. “You kept all of that?” “Of course, I have kept everything” she said. At the bottom of the box there are four sheets of paper folded into one another. The paper is discolored; I know it is not something I wrote. Mom took it out and started reading it out loud; she said it was the first time she read it without crying. I listen and I cry. It was a letter my brother wrote my mother when he was sixteen, after he had left. The letter begins:
“I don’t really know what to say. I wish everything wasn’t so complicated, but it is.” Even at the age of sixteen my brother knew how complicated life had become because of the choices he had made. I am not sure what made him get into drugs. My mom tells me it is because of the people he started to hang out with in high school, people he thought were “his friends.” The type of people who made him believe they were close with him because they said they were, but when he got into trouble they would be the first ones to stab him in the back. If his friends got into trouble with a local drug dealer, the blame usually fell on my brother. He was always dumb enough to think he could take on “harder” criminals and walk away unscathed. My brother wrote about his desire to explore the world and that he knew enough now to be on his own. The one aspect of the letter I cannot get out of my mind is the constant allusion of the word “scared.”
“But it’s gonna be so hard to get into then pay for college. That really scares me to.”
“There is so much I would love to do…but I’m scared I won’t be able to.”
“I don’t know what is gonna happen in the next year or two. I am really scared.”
* * *
My brother had taken on a lifestyle he was not ready for. It is understandable that he was scared. He left so young and wasn’t allowed to come back. He put our family in too much danger. At sixteen he decided he was an adult. When I was sixteen I was worrying about what to wear to the school dance or who was going to give me a ride to field hockey. I didn’t worry about where I was going to sleep or if I was going to have dinner. His “friends” became the only support system he relied on. He started dealing drugs to get money; he did drugs to relieve his own pain. My mom and dad would get calls from the police station saying that had been arrested and they needed to go and get him. It was becoming routine. Sometimes they would take turns going to get him. Other times I think they just wanted to leave him there in that hollow cell. Maybe then he would have felt how they did. Mom and dad would cry. I could hear them through the heating vent from my room. Dad would try to console her. “We will get through this; everything will be okay.” It never was. I never understood their pain until I was older. In many ways they feel as though they had failed as parents’. Having a child turn out the way Shawn did is not easy to accept, especially because he was a minor when all of this started. They didn’t have the resources or the money to get him the help that could have saved him. To this day I see how much they hurt. It used to be we didn’t talk about him because we didn’t want people to know and we didn’t want to re-live it.
Not long after my brother had left, my parents’ purchased a house in Hudson, the next town over. It needed work, but it was ours. For the most part he kept his distance from us and we tried to keep ourselves emotionally disconnected to him. To me, he had seemed like a distant memory. He had stopped by the house once in a while. He looked a lot older, and his face was harder. His eyes had no longer that glimmer of hope, but instead were concealed in a dense fog. I hugged you because you were my brother, but if felt no different than hugging a stranger.
* * *
It was late one night and I heard the phone ring. I knew something was wrong because mom and dad came into our room and got Kerry. Something had happened. I could hear my parents telling her in the hall that Shawn was in the hospital. They quickly left and Kerry watched over us. I was scared; I was asking a lot of questions. I am sure my sisters told me 100 times to shut up. It felt like it was days before my parents arrived home. It had really only been a few hours. My parents looked exhausted; physically and emotionally. I could tell my mom had been crying because her eyes were red and puffy. I know they probably didn’t sleep that night. They were more worried tonight than most nights. They wanted to know who had done this to him and if the same people would come after us. These questions replayed over and over in their minds. Although they wanted to learn what happened, they also wanted to protect us. The next day my mom told me that Shawn had been in a fight and he was hurt very bad. She was guarding the truth, but I will never blame her for that. The truth is the police found my brother in the middle of a baseball field. He was severely bleeding from his head, his body bruised, and he was not moving. When they found him he was not only unresponsive…he was dead. It was when he got to the hospital that by some miracle the doctors were able to revive him.
I imagine your torn and lifeless body on that hospital bed. I picture you getting beaten with baseball bats within inches of your life. I hear your screams and pleas, but no one came to save you. You took the beating because you were defenseless. It scares me to think of what happened that night, but part of me knew you must have done something to end up there.
You had been at a party earlier and gotten into a fight with a girl over alcohol, apparently the situation escalated. The guilty part of me thinks you would have been better off dead that night. I know…this sounds horrible, but understand that his life became worse after this point; his dependency on drugs and alcohol only stronger. A large part of me thinks if you had died that night you would no longer be in turmoil with yourself and your life. For once mom and dad could finally have peace-of-mind knowing exactly where you were and that nothing else could happen to you. As your sister it breaks my heart to even think this, but my heart has been missing the piece of you ever since you first left. You came over after you recovered from the hospital and you stayed with us for a while. Mom let you sleep on the couch. You still looked horrible; your face was still bloody and bloated. I didn’t even recognize you. I can’t remember if I cried or not, but I do remember not understanding why anyone would want to hurt you. After a couple of weeks you left again, without even a goodbye. Mom and dad would get calls every so often, either because you got into trouble or needed help. You would sometimes call and ask for mom and I would tell you no. Mom was hurting enough and I knew you were the last person she needed to hear on the other end of the line.
“Put her on the phone or I swear to fucking God…”
I started crying hysterically and yelled back at you. “Don’t call here again” and I hung up the phone. You immediately called back and I handed the phone to mom. She put her hand on my face.
When I look back on times like this it is now that I realize you were probably strung out. Every time I talked to you it was different. You were either psychotic or calm. Sometimes you would ask me how I was doing and ask me if school was going good. Other times you sounded anxious and scared. Your voice would be deeper and jittery. You would sound so angry. It was these calls where I was scared for you. You were Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I emotionally disconnected myself from you after that phone call. Although I was young I still was affected by your behavior. I always thought a person who was my brother would not talk to me like that. I hated you. I hated you for hurting mom and dad, for hurting us and for giving up on yourself and your life.
It was years before I saw you again. You started coming over again and you seemed to be more involved in our lives. Mom and dad let you come over, but you were never allowed to stay. They still didn’t fully trust you for all that you had done. Mom wouldn’t put the fact that you may steal while you were there behind her. I thought you were better. Mom said you had a job and were living in Marlborough. You starting dating a girl named Megan. She said you knew her from high school. I thought Megan was so kind and fun; she always gave me a lot of attention when she was over. She made you smile and for once in your life you had seemed complete. Your relationship quickly escalated and before long you hastily eloped. I never knew you were even married. I don’t think mom or dad knew at first either. When they found out they assumed there was a reason why. All I knew is that Megan made you feel content and made your life seem normal.
There had been one night where you and Megan stopped by unannounced. Shawn said he had to talk to mom and dad. Mom looked at me and told me to go upstairs. I huffed and unwillingly agreed. I slowly walked up the steps and stopped about three quarters of the way up. Just enough distance so they couldn’t see me, but I could still hear what was going on. I press my head in between the stair spindles and faintly hear “we are having a baby.” I remember thinking “holy crap, I am going to be an aunt!” I don’t think mom and dad were as elated as I was. They did what any supportive parents would do, they continued to be there for the both of you. They especially wanted to be there for the baby, happy or not, this was their first grandchild.
* * *
When you were married and trying to maintain a “normal” life I remember you coming over by yourself one Sunday afternoon. It was Easter and I was playing in the yard. You walked towards me. I remember being excited to see you. You looked healthy. Your eyes had that soft glow that I once remembered; your face was thinner, but not sickly. You hugged me. In your hand was a braided jump rope with thick foam handles, you handed it to me. I thanked you. You walked back towards the house so you could talk to mom and let me play with my new toy. This was the first and last gift you ever gave me. That summer I brought that jump rope to a local camp I went to and a counselor asked if she could borrow it for a game. I said no.
“My brother gave this to me.”
“I only need it for a little bit and then I will give it back.”
I hesitantly hand it over. At the end of the day I ask her where it is, she told me she didn’t know. I looked everywhere. I told my mom what happened when she came to get me that day. We never did find it. She told me we could replace it and that there was no need to be upset. What she didn’t understand, what no one understood, was what it meant to have that gift from my brother. For once I knew that he had been thinking about me and some part of him still cared. The jump rope signified happiness and childhood. It was a part of him that was still “human,” and now it was gone. Losing that toy, although it seems insignificant, was really hard for me. It was a part of me and my brother’s relationship that I never knew I had. I still think about this and I am still bothered by it. It seems silly now, but it was a memory of my brother I will never get back. It was one of the only positive memories I have of my brother, the rest I wish I could forget.
* * *
During the time you were married and getting ready to have a baby things seemed stable in your life. You had a home, you had a job, a wife, and you were expecting your first child. Mom would let me go over to your apartment alone and spend time with you and Megan. It was the first time I remember being allowed to spend time with you alone. It was probably the first time mom and dad had trusted you to spend time alone with me. I yearned for this relationship with you. I yearned to have a brother who could teach me sports and protect me from boys. A brother who I could look up to and go to if I needed help. For a while you had been that brother to me. For so long I felt that everything was normal and then out of nowhere it seemingly all changed. Year’s later mom told me you were doing cocaine and drinking alcohol just to suppress any other urges and your anger. Apparently your relationship with Megan had never really been stable, but on the outside you managed to make it look that way. Whatever you were doing had fooled me. Physically you did not appear sick and you were “well enough” to hold a job and live a seemingly normal life. I never knew what you were doing to keep up this charade. It makes me sad to know you had to take something to “cope” with this lifestyle. On June 6th 1999 Megan gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Hannah. I was only ten years old, but I was ready to take on the responsibility of an aunt. She was the sweetest baby. She had locks of golden hair and crystal blue eyes. The eyes I remember that Shawn once had, the eyes that still had hope. I spent so much of my youth with her, we grew up together. I remember days we would play in the yard at my parents’ house. I would rake a pile of leaves so she could jump into them. I would wheel her around the yard in the wheel barrel and push her on the swing. Nothing felt better than to hear her sweet laugh. Our time together was consistent until she was about five and I was fifteen. Everything started to fall apart between Shawn and Megan. They were fighting more, he quit his job, and he was cheating. It was not until years later that I learned he had another child, all which happened while he was married. As their marriage was falling apart, my brother was as well. He couldn’t handle the stress, the pressure, the anger so he did what he thought was best…he jumped.
* * *
From the third floor balcony of your apartment you let yourself fall. You were drinking heavily that day. I am sure the stresses of your marriage, the struggles of keeping your life as normal as it had ever been, the worry of raising a child had all caught up to you. Although I wasn’t there I imagine this event in slow motion. You sitting on the edge of the railing and casually smoking a cigarette, when all of a sudden you lose your grip and slip back too far. I wonder what had been running through your mind. Mom and dad told me that it was an accident and that you were lucky to survive. Years later I found out that you had tried to kill yourself. The phone rang again. When the phone rang and it was about you, we always knew it was bad. The look of pure terror on mom’s face always broke my heart. Every time the phone rang they expected to hear that you were dead. Every time the phone rang it was as if you had died.
Mom and dad went to visit you at the hospital. You were very much alive. You had shattered your foot and hurt your back. Although you still live with a foot that never healed, you were given another chance. When I look back on all the events you had gone through by the time you were only twenty-five, I am amazed at how many chances you were given and how many opportunities you had to make things right. However, every time something good happened to you in your life it quickly ended. I didn’t visit you this time and I didn’t see anyone after that. Megan blamed you for everything you had done, she blamed my parents. She took Hannah away from us for a long time. We were devastated. I was still young at this point and still found it difficult to understand what was truly going on. All I know is that you changed and Megan left. I figured it was because you didn’t get along anymore. My image of you was still veiled by the innocence of childhood.
When Hannah was about six or seven Megan met someone else and moved to an apartment in Hudson. She got in contact with my parents, they talked for a long time. I was able to see Hannah again so I knew things were better. I never knew that my parents were mad at her, but they were. When Megan took Hannah away, she took with her a large part of my parent’s heart. She took away a significant part of me. My niece and I were both so young. In many ways we grew up together; she was like my sister. All I wanted was to care for her and make her happy. I remember going through photo albums of us dressed in silly costumes. Hannah had red goggles on her eyes that were entirely too large for her toddler face and I had a yellow, sequined tutu around my head. I looked like the sun. Every memory I created with her was happy and that is exactly how I wanted it to be. I never wanted her to feel pain because of my brother. Sometimes I still have trouble forgiving Megan for taking her away, but my adult-self understood why she did.
Hannah was and always will be the best part of my brother. I am angry that he walked away from everything in his life. I am most angry that he walked away from his kids. This is how he was though…selfish. If things in his life were not going the way he wanted them to he would walk away. I feel like he was always trying to cope with something, like he had been put through some traumatic experience and all his life he has been searching for peace.
* * *
It is Hannah’s sixteenth birthday. I sit in my bed and write a letter. I think about my brother when he was sixteen, I cry. I write a letter to Hannah, about you. I don’t want her to live a life filled with anger because of you and I don’t want her to give up on all the opportunities she has because of you. Then I realize that she never will. Although you are a large part of who Hannah is and indirectly a large part of how she has “turned out,” she is nothing like you. I like to think a large part of Hannah came from me and the influence I had on her as she grew up. In my letter I tell her not to be angry, that if she ever wants to talk I am here. I tell her that I am proud of her and all that she continues to do. I remind her how beautiful she is on the inside and out and never give up on that person who continues within her to fight for a better future. Hannah is everything you could have been. I leave the letter on her bed in an envelope. I whisper in her ear that I left her something on her pillow and to look at it later. I get on my tiptoes and kiss her cheek. Much like you, she towers over me. She looks at me with those soft blue eyes and tucks her locks in back of her ear and laughs it off. A laugh that tells me she is embarrassed, but thankful. I tell her I love her and we go back to her party.
* * *
A part of me feels bad that you will never experience these events with us, the other part of me says that you do not deserve to.
After Megan left you moved around a lot throughout Marlboro, you lived with different people and were involved in different crimes. I can’t say this was the lowest point in your life, but it surely wasn’t a time that any of us will look back on to remember. In many ways you had been homeless since your were sixteen. You were nomadic and never stayed anywhere for too long. You lived day-by-day in different places.
* * *
I reflect back on your letter trying to understand your need to constantly be searching. Your urge to never stay put, as if something bad was always coming for you. You wrote
“I don’t know why but I feel trapped and just wanna escape. I don’t what from I just do. And about being here it’s not that I don’t always don’t want to be here there is just so m uch out there I just I don’t want to miss anything.”
I feel you were under the constant impression that if you had stopped for even the slightest, your life was going to pass you by. Ironically you chose to keep going even when you were choosing the wrong path; inevitably your life did pass you by because of this. I often think about what my brother was feeling when he first started getting into trouble. I have been at these points many times in my life, I have surely made bad choices and have been in trouble to the point where I could have been arrested, but I moved on. Like most people I had learned from my mistakes, but my brother…he never did. One mistake lead to another and it became a vicious cycle of trying to mask all of those choices with drugs and alcohol. His life has been a period of committing and forgetting. Addiction is not only a disease, it is a behavior. My brother’s constant need to keep moving and keep doing was because he never felt satisfied with himself or his life. He always assumed there was an escape, but really he was running from nothing but himself.
* * *
For most of my adulthood I have not heard from you. You call once and a while to tell mom that you are alive and that is all she really cares to know. In a sense you have always been homeless for you have never called a place home. Your life was as stable as your behavior.
Sometimes they pick you up from wherever you were. They take you out to lunch and buy you groceries. They don’t want to see where you are staying. It is hard enough to see you as you are. They no longer will give you cash because they don’t trust you will buy what you need. You have been in and out of shelters. You have been in more fights; you have been jumped, robbed, and arrested. I still keep my distance from you, but you’re still my brother. After you left Marlborough I know you were in and out of shelters and housing. Every place you were given through a drug program, you were kicked out of. Mom relentlessly tried to find you a new place and every time you would just lose it again. When you lost the place in Boston this is the first time I learned of you being truly homeless. I know you were staying in the subway tunnels and on the streets. I would imagine you cold and alone, huddled into any warm place you could find. Sometimes I had a heavy heart for you, most times I am angry and feel you are living the life you deserve. When you would call it was always something else. You were jumped and your things were stolen. You stories started to sound more and more like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” We didn’t believe them anymore. You always had a way of creating your own trouble. I feel like in getting into trouble and getting hurt you were truly seeking empathy. We don’t feel that for you anymore. You left Boston, it was too violent, and the streets were filled with too much temptation; cheaper drugs and an abundance of alcohol. If you had stayed I am sure you wouldn’t have survived. You are no longer the tough kid you once thought you were. Drugs had given you a lot of confidence, but not very much wisdom. The effects of drug and alcohol addiction started to degrade not only your mind, but your body. You could no longer defend yourself or your way of life. You made your way to Lowell in hopes of finding safer housing there. I think you had “friends” there. You eventually found somewhere to live there and as the story goes, you were kicked out for some reason or another. You couldn’t follow the rules, but it was never your fault. When you called to tell mom they kicked you out it was always because of someone else. You never blamed yourself for anything.
* * *
Mom and dad come to pick you up one day. They bring you to get coffee. They drive by the overpass which shelters the homeless community you call home. You say
“Hey look, that is the “campground,” as if this were a place you were excited to see, a place you were happy to show off.
Mom holds back her tears. I don’t think it had been this real until that moment. We know you are homeless. We know what you have done, but there is a significant difference in seeing it and experiencing it than there is in just hearing about it. They leave you wherever you ask to be dropped off and watch you walk away through the rear view. I can’t help but think what you feel when mom and dad leave you each time. I wonder if it feels the same as all the times you have left us. I wonder if you feel abandoned and forgotten. I wonder if you feel like you are missing a part of your life. I wonder if you ever wish you would have never left. Every time they drop you off I know a little more of their heart breaks. They have had to build a resistance from this pain because they can’t physically or mentally handle any more pain from you. I never go with them because I don’t want to see you left under that overpass, living under the weight of a city that does not care if you live or die. I do not go with them because I still hurt for you.
* * *
My brother is 38 now and has no resemblance of the teenager I once remembered. He is wrinkled and tired, his skin with sores. He is distended and walks with a limp. He is in constant pain. He has contracted Hepatitis B and C and has been diagnosed with liver disease. He still drinks regularly. Some days mom and dad still get calls that he has overdosed and once again been saved. I no longer feel relieved. Knowing how many times he has tried to commit suicide and walked away from this all. Knowing he kills himself a little more every day, maybe this is his hell, but he opened that door himself and chose to walk through. Although we tried to hold him back many times, the door always closed too quickly. The opportunity to save him never lasted long enough. I don’t see him anymore; if I talk to him it is through my mom. She visits him sometimes to bring him food and supplies. Every year I buy him a hat, gloves, and warm socks hoping that it will last him through the winter. Hoping that if he were to die, it would not be from something I could have prevented.
* * *
I am on my phone at Market Basket one recent Saturday checking my Facebook feed when I see a picture of you that some girl had tagged you in. Your face was bloody and bruised. You were swollen and your head was cracked. This is how I think you looked like the night that you had died. I start to shake and cry. My knees get weak and I almost drop to the floor. My boyfriend grabs me and asks me what’s wrong, I show him the picture. He takes my phone. I immediately call my mom and sister, they will know what to do. We all sent him messages telling him to take it down, sent messages to this girl to take it down, mom left him voicemail after voicemail swearing and screaming.
“Your daughter can see this! What the fuck are you doing?”
I write to the girl, I threaten her. I report her. The image comes down…I block my brother. Megan calls my mom in a panic, crying hysterically because she doesn’t know what to do. I pray my niece didn’t see that and she didn’t. We all go through a ringer of emotions. First scared and worried, then angry. My family and I try to put this event behind us. Like most incidents that happen with him, we try to forget. Every time something like this happens, it takes another piece away. It takes one of those times that I forgave you, one of those times when I felt love for you and allows me to forget them. I told myself I wouldn’t contact him again unless I had to. He doesn’t deserve to talk to me and there is nothing he could say at this point to make me feel otherwise.
* * *
I don’t tell many people that I have a brother; I don’t tell anyone that he is homeless. A part of me is embarrassed by my brother. The other part of me feels bad because of his addiction and his mental problems that ultimately lead to his losing control of life. The truth is I do not want people to feel bad for us or for him. My brother has chosen this life and has made choices based on his health. We have given so much of our lives to help and support him, all to no avail. For my own safety and emotional wellbeing I choose to distance myself from him.
* * *
My brother can no longer work. He is taking care of by the state. I don’t like the fact that he gets financial help from the state, personally I don’t feel he deserves it. Mom says that he worked for some time and paid into those benefits. I don’t agree. I just see this as another selfish act. His mental health is bad enough that he has a case worker who stays in “constant contact with him.” She calls my mom regularly to see if she knows where he is and if he can move in with them. My mom hangs up. The state has done little for our family as far as giving aide to my brother, they have done little for all those suffering with addiction and mental illness. Programs can get expensive and most programs are always full. There are waiting lists to get help. In many ways the system in Massachusetts failed our family. Many people ask now
“Why doesn’t he get help? He still has the opportunity to change.”
No…he doesn’t. When you see someone becoming an addict at the age of thirteen, an addiction so strong it strangles all the life out of the person, there is no more time to change. My brother has gone his whole life as an entity that is controlled by drugs and alcohol. His speech is often slurred, his mind is slow, and he can barely walk. His body is failing on the inside and out. He is too far to reverse any damage he has caused, at this point he is merely surviving.
Drug addiction is not something everyone overcomes. It is not always like those commercials where someone gets put into a high-class rehab and comes out a successful millionaire. The reality is that many people do not overcome their addiction. That this disease consumes their lives. My brother lost his life a long time ago and we have been with him through every traumatic event, every near death experience, every arrest, and every phone call. The life of a drug addict impacts the family unit as a whole. We have lived this life with him; we have hurt because of him, we have been angry at him, some of us will never forgive him. I don’t want anyone to ever think I have given up on my brother, many families when put into this situation distance themselves for protection. The mental impact on having a drug addict in your family is more than anyone could ever understand.
* * *
My mom and I were talking about my brother in the car one day. We seem to do this this often, yes, I know. It has consumed our lives for so long. Talking is a coping method. I told her
“I know this sounds horrible, but I wish they never revived him that day when they found him in that field.”
“I would never wish death upon any of my kids, but sometimes I just wish he had died too” she said.
* * *
How do you explain this to someone? An outside person reading this would think it was horrible. How could you wish your brother was dead, how could his own mother want the same? The truth is, in many ways we would all be better off. Shawn has tried so many times to kill himself. He has always been in pain and is constantly fighting his own demons. He has walked through hell and brought my parents with him. To see their heart break a little more with every call is the hardest thing I have had to see. My parents feel like they had failed…failed because my brother failed. If my brother were dead there would be no more of those phone calls. No more weeks without him checking in and just assuming he is dead anyway. It has been a life of anticipation. It is no longer is he going to die, it is a matter of when. My parents want peace most of all for my brother. They don’t want to have to worry if he is safe, or if he is warm. I believe his addiction started because he was searching for a way to fill a void and lessen his anger. Nothing could ever make him feel like that first high though, he has been chasing it ever since. It is not about wanting my brother to die…it is about wanting him to be free. My mother and father have already bought a plot for him and paid for his services. They wanted to be sure that if they die after him, we won’t have to handle that burden. I can’t imagine as a parent what it would be like to have to prepare services for my child. That is the reality of his life though.
* * *
I never wanted to see where you “lived.” If I had bought you something I would tell mom or dad to bring it to you. If I wanted to tell you something I would keep it to a message through Facebook. What hurts me the most about keeping you so distant is that you haven’t been able to see any of us grow. You didn’t get to see Em, Val, or Kerry get married. You didn’t get to see the birth of your nieces and nephews. You didn’t see us graduate college and get our dream jobs. You didn’t get to see your kids grow and accomplish everything they had ever dreamed for themselves. I am sad for you, truly. All off these wonderful things you have given up. I am not sure I will ever understand the real reasons behind your behavior and your actions, but I am sorry that you will never know what you have missed. Although you try hard now to be involved, it will never make up for the time that you have thrown out.
I often think about where he is. I think about him being homeless and on the streets. I think of homeless people who I have seen before and wonder what their story is. I always assumed homeless people were that way because they were poor and they had no family. I had always assumed they were drunks and drug addicts. Some are, but some are not. Yes, my brother was a drug addict and still is an alcoholic and yes, he is homeless. He is a homeless man with a family, a family he abandoned and never looked back.
* * *
May 2014, I was at home with mom and dad. Mom got a phone call from our close family friends. Their son Max Terrio had died from a heroin overdose. I remember swimming with him when we were young until our parents made us get out of the pool to eat lunch. You had golden locks of curly hair and bright blue eyes. I never imagined after we moved that I would never see you again. You were only 24.
* * *
December 2014, I am lying in my bed one day scrolling through Facebook on my phone. I notice “Rest in Peace John,” in my newsfeed and quickly click the message. John Testa, a classmate from high school who was only 26 years old, had died from an overdose. I remember watching you during band practice; you were amazing at the drums. You always had a smile on your face. Music was your life and your passion.
* * *
January 2015, reading the obituaries in the town paper. I come across a name I know. Tommy Arsenault, 24 “died suddenly in his home.” A classmate from high school, he was only 24; died from an overdose. You were hilarious. I hung out with you many times during high school and even a few times after. You were expecting your first baby.
* * *
January 2015, an article appears on my Facebook newsfeed. It is an obituary of a name I remember well another classmate, only 29; Eddie Figueria. He died from an overdose. “Eddie spaghetti with the meatball eyes put him in the oven and makes French fries.” We used to sing this on the bus on the way to elementary school. I don’t remember who came up with it or why, but I will never forget it. You were such a gentle soul.
* * *
March 2015, I skim through Facebook posts at work. Another name enters my news feed. “I still can’t believe you’re gone, I was just with you yesterday. Rest in Peace Josh Lucas. Gone, but not forgotten.” You died from an overdose. I remember you always making people laugh in high school. You were always in the principal’s office, but I knew you were not a bad kid. You were just trying to make a living. You were only 25.
* * *
Over the last year I have lost so many friends and classmates to drug addiction. These people lost their lives because of a choice they made. Whether it was the first time they used or whether it had been a lifelong battle like it is for Shawn. These kids were not given endless opportunities to change their lives; they were never given the opportunity to live again. These kids chose to use and that one time was their last time. As I read over this list, my heart sinks like a brick in an ocean. I think about their families and what they went through and continue to go through because of drug addiction. I think about how this addiction has torn their families apart. I think of my family and I think of you, Shawn. For all the times you tried to kill yourself, for all those times you didn’t deserve to wake up…you did. I am angry because you continue to live and these kids, my friends, died. All I can think is that you are now living the life that you deserve. A life with constant pain and little hope; a life in which you must live each day knowing you are dying. This punishment, this life, is your hell. For all the times you tried to die, you must now face the consequences of the life you have chosen. You must live with it every day.
Narrative Nonfiction
2 Likes
911 Views
Share: