Submitted by ghost via comments
At least, I hope he’s OK with me turning a comment into a post. He writes a good story and lets us enjoy his writings every once in a while.
Commented April 1

Welp, today my next younger brother would have turned 70. He died 15 years ago or so. I don’t remember. He and I had been on and off again most of the time since we were both teens. Mostly off. His choice.

I mentioned this brother awhile back. A kid was beating his ass one time and I came to his rescue by putting the kid in the emergency room, when I was 10. In another year or so me and this brother started drifting apart.

Though he and I were only 14 months apart in age the school system had us 2 grades apart. Grades 1-6 he and I saw each other day but in 7th and 8th grade I went to another school and that’s where the gap started, and it never closed up.

When I turned 19 I went in the army and it was 10+ years before I saw this brother again. I was married with a kid on the way and he had been in and out of jail many times. Never violent, he just couldn’t keep his hands off other peoples stuff.

In our early 30’s his lifestyle was such that it effected his appearance and not for the good. He looked like a down on his luck criminal. We spoke kindly to each other, but he looked so diff from the last time I had seen him that I was very wary of him. I had been a soldier and he had been a thief.

I wanted to help him. Lacking much cash at the moment, (1986) I wrote him a check for $100. He pulled out a lighter and set it on fire and dropped it in an ashtray. Then left. My wife and I just looked at each other.

It was about another 10 years when I saw him again. Our son was a young teen, my wife and I had been married about 14 years and I had been running my architecture business for 10 years.

It was in the evening and I was out in our garage doing something and an old van pulled into the driveway and my brother got out. I didn’t recognize him at first. He was looking rough. Real rough. We chatted in the driveway and I felt uncomfortable and he did too. He left and I never seen him again. This was in the late 90’s.

Over the years I heard about him now and then, from my sisters, other brother, and my mother who lived in San Diego. He kept doing drugs, stealing stuff, getting caught, doing a little bit of time in the can, over and over.

He would bounce around the country, Fort Myers, FL, a place in ARK, and San Diego. Working shitty jobs, getting fired or quitting, petty theft, shoplifting, drugs, jail, release, living with cheap women….over and over, never getting any real traction.

I had a sister, 2 years younger than this brother (she’s now dead too) that was married with 2 daughters and sometimes this brother would stay at her house until he wore his welcome out. Then he’d move in with my mother and her husband (not my dad – he died in 1980), until he got throwed out of there too. Back n forth, no traction.

Somewhere in the early 00’s, don’t remember when, I got a call from my San Diego (really Lemon Grove) sister telling me our brother had died, on her front door step. She was at work at the time and found him when she came home. The best they could tell is he died from a massive heart attack from drug use. I can’t remember the drug right now as I write this, I think it starts with an M. I never tried it nor knew anyone that had.

A few weeks later my mother cut my brothers obituary out of the paper and sent it to me. It’s in a small lockbox I have with such things in it. My Dad’s obit is in there. As well as my mothers, my other brother’s, and my youngest sisters. Of our immediate fambly the only obits that aren’t in that lockbox are my oldest sister’s (3 years younger than me) and mine.

Like my brother was most of my life, I don’t know where that lockbox is right now.

There’s still one more chapter in this story.

Throughout the years, starting in the mid 70’s my bother had an on again off again with a woman named Lorie. She was a lowly person and I didn’t care for her. My brother was always going back and forth with her. When he went to jail she’d hook up with another dood, sometimes marrying, and a couple years later she’d take back up with my brother when he got out. Over and over. Turns out that my brother and Lorie had spawned 2 little girls and put them up for adoption. Both girls were adopted by a very wealthy and childless couple.

10 years ago I got an email from a young woman in Chicago that told me she was one of those adopted girls and wanted me to tell her about her father. She had learned he was dead and knew almost nothing about him. She wanted to have a family relationship with his family.

I didn’t reply for 3 days, I didn’t know what to say. It took me that long to find and install my “Hat of Diplomacy”. I needed to carefully carve a set of words that conveyed my thoughts to her in such a way that I gave her some meaningful information without lying or hiding the truth, but not going too far.

Having any sort of meaningful relationship with this young woman who was in her early 20 and married with a daughter seemed like it would be awkward and strained, and what would be the point? Our only connection was her father and my brother and neither one us knew him very well, or, in her case, at all. I told her that and I never heard from her again.

On this day every year I think of this stuff. Then tomorrow I put everything back in that lockbox, until next year….