If I tell you that my 76-year-old brother began using drugs when he was 14, you might guess what our relationship has been like over time.  And, if add that my parents always favored my brother, because as my mother once said, “He needs more love,” you would understand even more about our relationship. Understand that to live my life, I cultivated not thinking about him. You might also think I hated him. 

It's true that his use, relapses and occasional criminal behavior created a great deal of trauma, particularly for my parents, who hid most of the early episodes from me.  Away at college, I was spared much of the nitty-gritty of overdoses and police intervention.  And for some reason, when I went home, he was always someplace else.

After college, I went even further away from home to graduate school, and my parents carefully filtered and titrated news of my brother’s escapades. I knew of his various attempts to hold a job, none of which was successful, although he seemed to love selling cars.  I heard about a rehab or two, and knew that at some point, my parents attended weekly therapy sessions with him. 

What I never knew—or cared to know—was the real nature of his problem and how involved my parents were in each and every episode.  Why should I care? He was four and a half years younger, we had never been close, and he had caused a great deal of commotion in our family.  He had occupied and at times preoccupied my parents, making my adolescence more difficult and leaving me no other role than the “good girl.” If I allowed myself to care, I’d have to confront my anger and jealousy. When I got away from home, I needed to leave all that behind.

Fast forward to when I married, then became pregnant.  In those days, we didn’t learn the sex of our child until birth, and I became obsessed with anxiety about my future child.  If it was a boy, would he turn out to be like my brother? Or would he be a disaster in another way?  Would he be malformed?  Stillborn? Unable to function on his own. Given our family history, I couldn’t imagine a happy ending to my pregnancy.

When my perfect son was born, I cried with relief. “You mean there’s nothing wrong with him?”

“No,” my obstetrician replied.  “Why would you think that?”

Once again, my brother receded into the background.  At some point, I became aware that he had moved to the South, though I can no longer remember the explanation.  Most likely, he had run out of options in our hometown.

Soon after my father, a prominent astro-physicist, retired, my parents announced that they were moving from Philadelphia to Alabama.  My father had bought a car dealership, where he would be in charge of the finances and my brother would head the sales department.  My mother and father had bound their fate to my brother, while they had left me, the good daughter, far behind.

Eventually—you guessed it—the situation blew up.  My father realized that my brother was stealing from the dealership, so he fired him, but not without paying him “his share” of the business--over a million dollars.  My father kept his dealership running, while my brother purchased another, which went bankrupt within a year.

I began paying more attention.  My parents were older now, and were living in an area where they had little support.  I began to talk to them about moving closer to me, which they did, several years later, after they sold the dealership and their house, and I found a retirement community within a half-hour of my home, where I thought they’d be happy.

Not long after their move, my brother followed suit and settled about ten minutes from my parents.  Because I now saw him much more frequently than ever before—nearly whenever I visited my parents—I began to pay attention.  I quickly noticed that he alternated between lethargy and hyper-activity and that my parents never seemed to notice.  I also quickly realized that my brother’s behavior, much less his addiction, was never mentioned.

Quite a few years passed, and my father died.  It didn’t take long for my brother and mother to join forces.  At some point, my mother let me know that she had “changed” the equal portions will and trust she and my father had created.

Despite mistreatment, I remained the good girl, visiting my mother weekly, going to dinner with my mother and brother each Sunday evening.  I never knew what to expect of my brother’s behavior during these dinners.  At times he and my mother were an hour late.  Other times, he seemed manic, once sweeping two water glasses to the floor with his enthusiastic arm flourishes.  Other times, his eyes drooped and his body swayed.  “Oh, I can see you haven’t been sleeping well,” my mother often commented, as she took his knife and cut his meat for him.

I stayed quiet and dutiful, never mentioning the altered will and trust, nor my brother’s troublesome behavior.  Then one Sunday night after my brother disappeared from the table for over a half-hour, and my mother said not a word about his prolonged absence, I cracked.  The following day I phoned her.  “Mom, I love you and Marty, but I cannot go to dinner with the two of you any longer,” I told her.

“Then you are no longer part of the family,” she replied, and hung up. At the time she was 98 years old.

For the next three years I lived quite happily without my mother or brother.  Then, feeling guilty about not seeing my very aged mother, I phoned her and we resumed our relationship, with a phone call twice a week and a visit each weekend.  We never mentioned what had transpired, and she never spoke about my brother, who had moved away.

After my mother died, I saw my brother briefly, then followed ten years with not a word, even when I texted him simply to say hello. Strangely, I found myself sadder and sadder at being out of touch with the last member of my family of origin.  I expected my last involvement with him would be a call telling me he had overdosed.

Then, three months ago, my brother called me. He mentioned a near-death experience and a woman who had stolen thousands of dollars from him, then enthusiastically questioned me about my life.  Talking to him, over the chasm of ten years silence, I had to admit to myself that I felt happy to hear his voice and be in touch.  He was, after all, my only remaining family, able to share with me moments from our childhood and perceptions about our parents. He surprised me by saying, “Mom was really a cold fish.” And he quickly agreed that our family life revolved around our father, a “true narcissist.”

Once we hung up, I understood quickly that this might be the single time I could connect with my brother in a loving way. He might begin using again and disappear.  And just as quickly I decided that this once, while not “enough,” was at least something, and I could savor that.

Since then, my brother and I have spoken twice more, the last time on Christmas day.  I missed answering that call, but when I saw he had phoned, I sighed with relief. When I phoned him back, we talked about our lives, the AA meetings he attends several times a day, a woman who was preparing lambchops for their holiday dinner, the retirement community where my husband and I now live, my granddaughters.  As we spoke, I felt the ice that had formed when I had first left home melt. And when my brother and I said goodbye, I began weeping.  “I love you, Bro!” I said before hanging up. “I’ll call you soon.”