Hello, Sorrow, My Old Friend

Any of you who have followed this blog for the past few years know of my struggles to deal with my troubled brother while I was taking care of my father. I finally had to take him back to Colorado, which was the most horrifying trip of my life.

I still remember the last time I saw him. I was sitting at the wheel of a rental vehicle, and he was standing outside the door. He begged me to stay one more night, but I knew the next night he would beg, and then again, and I had to make a clean break.

We talked for a while, then he told me I shouldn’t drive far before getting a room, that he was worried about my falling asleep. This concern for me, the first he had shown in the fourteen months we were together, broke me. I started to cry. Then he told me several sights I should be sure to see, and I cried harder. “Do you think this is a fun trip for me?” I said. “It’s killing me. I don’t want to leave you here on the streets.”  He touched my hand, and my tears dripped onto our hands. He expressed surprise that I cared, and I explained that of course I cared. I’d spent the past fourteen months trying to keep him off the streets, which is why I’d lobbied for his camping out in the garage.

I reached out for my brother’s hand, needing that one final touch, but he turned and walked away, tears of his own in his eyes.

I cried all thousand miles back to my father’s house.

I knew I’d never see him again, so I thought I’d finished my grieving, but still. the news that he died last night has torn me apart.

Now I am crying again. All I can think of is that brilliant boy I so idolized, and the tortured man he turned into.

And I can’t help reflect that both brothers near to me in age, the one a year older, the one a year younger, are now gone. Both died way too young. It’s as if my childhood, such as it was, has died too.

Yeah. Sorrow.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.