Happy 34th Birthday – An Exercise in Futility

On the 34th birthday of my brother this past Friday, I found myself steering my car to one of my least favorite places to visit.

The cemetery.

It’s at least a bi-annual tradition that feels like an obligation more than a duty. The drive to the cemetery. Looking for the headstone. Parking. Walking through the memorials to arrive, finally, at a place that derives no joy or happiness.

Today is a little different as I can see the site has been decorated. There’s fresh flowers and a card. A cupcake and a cigar. Gifts from loved ones that will only fill a trash can. I feel guilt at having brought nothing. Again.

Without fail, I mumble some sort of greeting as if I’m talking to someone. I sit on the bench next to the matching headstone and am always surprised at how wildly uncomfortable marble is to sit on.

“So, it’s your birthday again. Happy birthday I guess.”

I stand up and walk to the back of the gravestone where there’s a great picture of Phil smiling his dopey grin. Happy and alive.

Staring him in the face is the reminder I never want of the things lost these almost 10 years now. Such an astounding amount of life and suffering has happened since he passed that in many ways, it feels like he never existed.

He feels more and more like a memory of a life I never lived. Like recalling the best bits of a movie you’ve not seen in ages or remembering the best part of the punchline of a joke.

It’s all slipping away and that, to me, is the worst part of him having died so young. I have so much living left to do and the vast majority of it will be without my kid brother there to balance the scales.

It’s an absurd cruelty visited upon far too many to lose the ones we love so early.

But the simple fact is that my brother lived. He existed and was someone worth knowing.

So, in the middle of May 2022, I’ll steer myself back to this place and walk those same steps and mumble some sort of greeting and sit down and hate this damn bench, but I’ll be back.

Because he lived and I have to do the job of remembering.

Doubt

Ask either of my children what sage advice I offer most and they’ll instantly reply, “Don’t grow up.”

I tell them this because they seem to think that being an adult comes with only upsides.

We can stay up as late as we want. Eat as much ice cream as we can physically stomach. We can buy things for ourselves and possibly worst of all….we get to make the rules.

Scandalous!

How could life be anything other than amazing at all times with such powers?!

As you’re reading this now, you know how trying and complex life can be simply born from the act of existing.

I certainly don’t remember anyone reading off a list of downsides to growing up.

No possible way was a job worse than elementary school! Getting 8 or more hours of sleep is that much wasted play time! I’d never tire of making my own lunch because I’d pack it with junk food!

To be faced with such problems again.

Of all the things becoming an adult has taught me, it’s that something as seemingly small as doubt can really begin to weigh you down.

As usual, the doubt pertains with how best to deal with my mom. Specifically in regards to my kids.

After a large fight last August where I had to physically remove her from my house, I’d had enough. I was done dealing with her. Done walking a tight rope of maintaining contact for the sake of my kids.

So I made as hard of boundaries as I’m able: don’t see or talk to her ever again.

Even with these boundaries in place, she’ll attempt to call me and act like everything is normal over voicemail. My neighbor caught her on video looking in my garage early one morning and she straight up just showed up during the Easter Egg hunt while my kids were outside.

All of these things just make me more angry at her and strengthen my resolve to just wait her out. Until death apparently.

That is, until recently, after kissing my daughter goodnight on the forehead and she breaks down and sobs about how much she misses grandma. She knows grandma is sick, but she “can still see her, right?”

So, it seems, the strength of my resolve is only tested by the depth of my love for my child. A child I’m, ironically, attempting to protect from more pain, confusion and maybe even danger.

Again, I find myself doubting what is right here. Do I attempt to control a situation with an uncontrollable person and open my entire family up to more pain if I have to shut communication down again?

Or do I stay the course and eliminate the possibility of my children to have a relationship with a grandmother that adores them? A decision my kids may strongly resent me for later.

To me, the correct answer is the one that keeps my children most out of the way of harm.

But also, maybe I’m being paranoid.

I have grown weary of my inability to pass the buck. Most of the time, I wish someone else could make the call and they could live with the consequences.

Because life is complex, I’m constantly second guessing myself and I long for the days of only having to decide which color popsicle I want: red or purple?

The answer is always purple.

I Failed My Brother

For whatever reason, I wanted to be the first to see Phil in the hospital on the day that he died.

Maybe some part of my brain had to see that he was really gone to process the situation, but I prefer to believe it’s because I couldn’t stand the thought of him being alone for one moment longer.

I let go of my wife’s hand and quickly walked past my parents and flung open the curtain.

There he laid on his back in a hospital gown. Looking as if he were just catching a quick nap.

I grabbed a chair on his left, took hold of his hand and wept.

Sitting there in disbelief, I quietly spoke to him about how much I loved him, was going to miss him and I made him a promise, that as his brother, I would look out for the family and take care of things.

If our positions were reversed, I know for certain that Phil would make the same pledge.

Well, it hit me this evening that I failed my brother. What should have been my most precious vow, I actively took part in destroying.

Roughly a year after Phil died, I begged my father to divorce my mom. I sincerely believed that if he showed her he was willing to leave her forever, that she’d believe he wasn’t wanting any power over her and she’d snap out of her extreme paranoia and delusions.

I was very wrong.

As shocking as it may be to read, I received word this evening that my mom is going to try and have my brother exhumed.

I can only imagine that this is an attempt to prove to everyone that he’s actually very much alive.

Of all the stuff that’s happened over these almost 8 years, nothing has upset me more than her insistence that Phil is alive and well.

The very real death of my brother was just the first domino to fall that would ultimately fracture my family.

And even though it’s true that no amount of strength I could muster would have kept my family from ripping itself apart, I can’t escape the fact that I failed on my promise.

While I do hold Phil in very high regard, I wonder, if our places were reversed, would he have been strong enough to succeed where I failed?

Would he have been able to keep his promise?

Knowing him, he might have.

Just to prove that he could.

The Unfinished Puzzle

Usually a person is dead before you have to do this stuff. Depending on who you ask, my mother has been dead for some time.

To me, my mom is more of a specter or a ghost. Alive, but haunting me always from the corners of my life. Popping up every once in a while to give my heart a jolt and my body a rush of adrenaline as my blood pressure takes another uptick.

Or maybe a boat anchor? More times than I care to admit I’ve felt like I’m drowning with land in site as I struggle with this concrete filled coffee can attached to my ankles.

You see, my mom is about to be homeless and, again, the nightmare of dealing with her falls squarely on the shoulders of my brother and I, two people who want nothing more to do with her, but are obligated to do something.

She is dear old mom after-all.

Last weekend I got a call from the HOA of her condo asking me if I knew her whereabouts. Turns out they’re about to do a Sheriff’s Sale on her condo to recoup the $19,607.00 she owes them.

How does one rack up that much debt to an HOA? It’s really pretty easy if you refuse to pay your dues, the HOA lawyer fees in trying to deal with you through the courts and contractor fees to repair the damage you’ve done to the condominium.

Add in some interest and bingo: $19,607.00

Unfortunately for all involved, my mom has been on the run from imaginary people for 2 and a half months now and is currently residing in a motel in Colorado.

She told my brother she’s out of money, has maxed out her credit cards and drained her IRA. She has enough money to stay another week or enough to get home, but she wouldn’t dare go back to her condo. Not without a police escort because she fears for her safety.

The information of the impending Sheriff’s Sale was relayed to her and she’s insisting it’s a scare tactic and they can’t do what they’re about to do. We’ve informed her they very much can and very much will.

This weekend, with the new information in hand and with the help of some old Power of Attorney paperwork, my brother and I were able to gain entry into her condominium. This was done in order to get our possessions she’s held from us before they’re literally tossed on the side of the road.

All of our childhood photos, home movies and my deceased brother’s belongings are there. These are things we refuse to lose.

In we went and were again confronted with the living conditions of a crazy person. Living in a once very beautiful condo on a lake, it’s now filled with boxes of things she refused to let my dad have in the divorce out of spite.

All the light fixtures are ripped from the walls. The vents are taped closed and the carpeting has been ripped from the floor. Outside on the deck, she’s started to rip the siding off the exterior for the 2nd time.

Of all the upsetting and depressing moments from this weekend, 2 ring as having registered closest to my calloused heart.

The first was a police report my brother filled out, he was a county cop, but never got to turn in before he passed.

Almost unbelievably, the police report was a witness statement from the day before he died. The report was a description from a witness of a motorcycle accident on the same road my brother would die on the very next day….in a motorcycle accident.

The universe, it seems, never runs out of ironies.

The second was a puzzle my mom had been working on that was assembled, but missing 1 piece.

In the living room on a card table was a picture of a beautiful church with a tall steeple and 1 missing piece from the surrounding woods.

It crushed me.

To see the state in which my mother exists. The solitary nature of her life as she lives in constant fear and persecution. Alone with her thoughts and hatred she toiled away in a poorly lit living room with an old TV and only VHS tapes to fill the air with noise.

She sat, alone, filling endless time doing a puzzle by herself only to reach the end and realize she couldn’t finish her work.

How absolutely miserable her life must be.

And I, once her son with the biggest heart, am here to pick out what he wants from her remaining possessions.

I’ll spend the rest of my life unpacking moments like this.

Large portions of who my mother is now, I’ve come to learn and accept, have been present my whole life. When you’re a kid, your normal is your normal. It’s all you know.

It’s only when you get older and gain some perspective that you learn things weren’t as you’d understood them. This is life and that’s okay.

To me, my mother died a little less than a year after my brother did. I just wish he were here to help his two older brothers carry the burden of dealing with the mess.

If nothing else, at least then I wouldn’t have to deal with the ghosts of him in every box I unearthed this weekend.

Stay Busy

“Stay busy.”

The simple advice given to me by a friend after my brother died.

“Stay busy.”

Bury yourself in work. Home projects. Family. Friends. Anything.

“Stay busy.”

Orient your mind in a way that focuses in areas other than the loss, but also remember to take time for yourself.

“Stay busy.”

Today my brother would’ve been 31 years old. Or is it 30? I think it’s 31.

Stay busy!

One Impossible Question and One Terrible Thought

Given the path my life has taken these past 6 years, it’s a tad ironic that I’ve never felt more connected to a Bible verse in my life:

Matthew 27:24
“When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!””

While my scenario and the one described in the Bible vary greatly, I understand the frustration. I understand the surrender.

I’ve washed my hands of my own mother.

My mother, as I’ve hinted at in the past, has quite literally gone insane.

From thinking people live in her attic and pump poisonous gas into her home. To telling me kids live in her condo and hide her keys from her. Or that time she told my brother that my dad has a group of kids buried in a hole in Gary, Indiana and is going to cut their hands and feet off. And that time she broke into my house and told the police “The people told her to.”

Sadly, these are just a couple examples from the last 5 years of paranoia and schizophrenic behavior.

The many stories I could tell you would inspire laughter, disbelief, anger and frustration.

For a solid 4 years I tried. I really did. I tried to understand the how and the why. Then I stopped trying to understand and tried to just have a relationship of some sort. I tried to keep myself and my kids in her life, but safely and sanely.

I tried hard enough that only 1 year into this mess my mom’s case worker told me directly, “You and your brother have gone far beyond what most families attempt to get aid.”

So in October of 2017 I finally came to the impossible question:

At what point do I let my mother destroy herself? 

I’d exhausted all options of forced medical help and police intervention. The only way she’ll be forcibly locked up and medicated is if she hurts herself or someone else. This is, I came to find, why jails are the biggest mental institutions in the United States. They’re full of mentally ill people that just won’t take their meds.

The only actual option I have left is some type of legal guardianship over her and, plainly, I’m unwilling to do that for a variety of issues.

My mom wasn’t some super sweet, innocent, kind and level headed person before she got to this state. She’s always been manipulative, controlling, angry and crushingly difficult to deal with because she’s always, in her mind, the smartest person in the room.

So, if I were to say, oh, I don’t know, become the sole person responsible for all of her financial situation and pay all her bills and control her money, it would be absolute hell for me. She would make sure to curse me into oblivion.

She already thinks I’m an evil agent of my father used in a “game” to ruin her. If I took ownership of her finances, she would see it as my father taking final control over her life and she may snap in the worst way that word implies.

You see, there’s still 1 unaccounted for gun from the divorce. Does she have it? I don’t know.

I’m writing this now because last night I received news that the police and her condo association have finally gotten a court signed injunction to, if needed, break down her door and fix issues with her condo that have created massive water issues for the people living below her.

If my mom resists, she’ll be put in jail. If she’s compliant, she can’t be in her condo for 10 days while repairs are made.

She also owes massive amounts of money to the home owners association for legal troubles and contractor repairs. She no longer has a car because she lost it playing her dumb games with innocent, unknowing people. And she’s burned almost every bridge she has in her life.

So, finally, the very real possibility of homelessness is finally on the table and I saw it coming over 2 years ago.

Which brings me to my terrible thought. I confess I conceived this originally over 4 years ago, but I’m just now able to admit it out loud today:

I wish my mother were dead.

Not out of anger, but selfishly so that I’d still have many good memories and happy thoughts of her. Happy times with my once solid family still intact.

If she’d passed away years ago, I could remember the mom that held me as a kid and was an amazing listener. The mom that always laughed at my jokes and never put herself first. I could remember the love.

It seems that that mother passed away a year after my brother did.

In truth, I can say I have a clear conscience about it all. I tried. I really tried.

Or maybe I don’t because I know I can do more, but don’t have the wits about me to try and control the uncontrollable until one of us dies.

Maybe I say I tried to keep the guilt at bay that my mother, the woman that raised me, may soon find herself without a home.

So, I hear you, Pilate. I too have washed my hands of something.

It’s just becoming increasingly distressing that no matter how hard I scrub, some of this dirt won’t come off.

What I’ve Learned After 6 Years of Godlessness – AKA “Dogmas, bruh.”

Technically, it wasn’t after 6 years. More like 2 years, but it’s taken me 4 years to finally write this down.

So, prepare yourselves for this mind blowing truth bomb that comes with a heaping pile of anecdotal evidence gathered personally and through discussions with others.

The truth I’ve learned after 6 years of walking away from belief is that just about everyone requires belief in something bigger than themselves.

Less because of the validity of “god shaped holes in our hearts”, but because of plain old fashioned tribalism and fear.

Be it politics, science, social justice causes or straight up theism, everyone clings to their own dogmas.

Having personally been raised in a church and by conservative parents, I’d assumed once I left belief and walked into a new community of people, that I’d be awash in open minded free thinkers.

I was wrong.

It took some doing, but once the newness of weak atheism/agnosticism rubbed off, I felt like Saul in the book of Acts when the scales fell from his eyes and he could again see clearly.

These atheists I’d assumed would be less likely to blind spots in their thinking were every bit as emotionally tied to their beliefs as the christian fundamentalists they raged against seemingly without end.

This mostly seemed to take the form of political worship of the left in varying degrees of  severity. To even entertain the idea of conservative thinking meant you were, by default, a racist homophobe that hates women.

The God of Government is the new deity and the only holy denomination is leftism.

Gag me.

I wonder what atheists would think of one of their heroes, Christopher Hitchens, if he were still alive today.

While many an atheist will send you endless YouTube clips of people getting “Hitchslapped” (see video below) by Christopher, those same people seem to forget that Hitchens was a pro-life conservative.

In today’s extreme political tribalism, I think even Hitchens, with all his oratory skill, could get swallowed alive by the gaping maw of the left.

You see, to be a conservative atheist puts you in a rather small section of an already small group, but to throw pro-life in there, too, well now you’re sitting at a corner table of a hot wedding tent next to the port-a-jons where nobody can see or hear your cries for fresh air.

Atheists, it seems, are a monolith of political leftists that worship the state.

And they all have iPhones. Weird.

Science is another thing people really get into when you leave religion.

Did you know that we’re all stardust?! DID YOU KNOW THAT?!

That means like, that we’re all stars and connected and part of a larger piece of the universe!

These people will post endless Neil deGrasse Tyson videos and talk about how glad they are that when they die, their essence goes back to the universe. An endless cycle of death and life!

These are also the people that like to point out how improbable something is in a sci-fi movie because it’s not realistic.

I know I’m taking the piss out of large groups of people, but this is how I see it.

Maybe it’s easy for me to poke fun at these groups because I’m so whatever about most everything.

My wife once, I believe, correctly summed former believers up so I’m going to paraphrase here and omit all her swears because she’s such a potty mouth:

“The type of believer someone was is probably the type of non-believer they’ll be. If you were On Fire for Christ, you’re probably obsessed with science now. If you were a hardcore Republican, you’ve probably flipped to Democrats.”

Based on what I’ve seen and learned. I think she nailed it.

Lucky for me I was a lukewarm Christian, so I’m a lukewarm weak atheist.

We live. We die. We should try to not be assholes during that period.

Avoid groupthink and ideologies where you can. If someone isn’t hurting another party, let them do their thing.

Let’s take everything with a nuanced approach and go from there.

Except iPhones. Those should go where Steve Jobs did.

Hell.

35 Years Old and Half Dead

So, this is it? Pretty much halfway there give or take.

Feeling good. Feeling pretty good.

Fighting to keep my hair from leaving me. The laugh lines are ever deeper and ‘The Battle of the Gut’ is always in full swing, neither side willing to relinquish control over the geographic location known as my tummy.

I have 2 wonderfully funny, kind and affectionate children and a wife that still thinks I’m pretty funny, if not still a little too crass at times.

I feel a good bit less about some things than I used to and an overwhelming amount more about things I’d never considered.

I’m more or less tired most of the time and figure people are, usually, good individually, but terrible in groups.

I still enjoy nothing more than laughing until I cry and cherish time with my friends as we bend elbows at a local place of delicious brown beverages that make me laugh harder and louder than normal.

I’ve lost some people I loved immensely and miss them daily, but have been blessed with more love because of it.

Been in more fistfights in my life than your average next 2 or 3 guys combined. Done some walloping of my peers and also had the shit kicked out of me.

My cage is generally rather hard to rattle, but I still fear leaving my family early more than anything else on this floating rock.

I’ve rather enjoyed this first 35 years and am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next 35 should I be so lucky to make it there.

5 Years On, It’s the Small Things that Mattered Most

Today at 12:48 PM, my brother will have been dead for 5 years.

This particular day doesn’t feel any more special or worthy of note than any others, but here I am, making note of it. Probably more out of habit than anything else.

Five years on and I’ve realized it’s the small things that have left the largest impact on me since Phil’s passing. How people around me reacted at a low point has taught me a great deal about loving others.

Patti, the receptionist at work who heard me lose it on the phone when I got the news, who came over to me and rubbed my back with one hand back and forth slowly, gently as I cried at my desk. She cried with me as I packed my things to go be with my family.

Jeff, a good friend that was walking into the hospital as I pulled up to it, who simply sat with me in silence and waited patiently for me to say it was okay that he go home to his family.

Brandon, a dear friend that drove 4 hours to be there at the funeral and embraced me like a brother.

An uncle that, to this day, sends me “head check” texts on the anniversary of Phil’s death as well as on Phil’s birthday.

Seemingly endless amounts of people that showed up to the visitation and offered kind words and cooked meals for our family.

Almost daily messages in the weeks and months that followed of people talking about Phil and sharing funny stories.

Others reached out and offered sage advice on dealing with loss. One such friend even shared how he was able to grieve after he lost an infant to SIDS.

Loss, it seems, has the ability to expand love in this world as well as end it. I count myself blessed for having received an overflowing amount of it.

I share all of this now as a poor way of saying thanks to those that have lifted me up in low moments.

Having been shown such kindness and grace from family and friends, it further cements in my mind that it’s the small things that matter most in life.

A gentle hand. A warm smile. A strong embrace. Kind words. Being present.

These things matter.

Agnosticism > Atheism (and Theism)

With as much as I generally don’t like to run, you’d think I was running some crazy ass marathon for the amount my intellectual landscape has shifted over the last 5 years.

From lifelong believer to outspoken atheist full of venom to an atheist that’s just live and let live to now just a plain old boring lacks the balls to take a firm stance agnostic.