He Wasn”t Heavy. He was My Brother.

I could save you a lot of time and effort reading this missive by simply stating its conclusion: although I have a lot to answer for, I loved my brother and I think he loved me. This essay is not interesting for this conclusion, however. After all, brothers are supposed to love each other, and most brothers do, What is remarkable about my relationship with my brother is the complicated and long looping path we took to attain this belief. My brother and I were not particularly close during our childhood. Looking back, I probably was responsible for this state of affairs. The difference in our ages was large enough at the time that I didn’t find him particularly interesting. I felt no animosity towards him, however, because I rarely saw him as an important part of my life. For me, he almost didn’t exist. Instead, I focused on my life of building forts in the woods, swimming in the lake, and hanging out with my own friends who really didn’t notice him much either. I was unaware at the time, but my brother became extremely angry about this indifference.

I’ve been told by a number of people that Bill envied me and felt I didn’t deserve the good fortune and resulting success that he felt I was actively cultivating. Apparently, from the time he was a small boy, he had felt that our parents preferred me over him. While I was vaguely aware that our parents saw me as less of a problem, their favoritism never bothered me for several reasons. First, he never directly complained to me about his status, and since I was a rather self-absorbed child, I rarely noticed, or if I did occasionally notice, I rarely thought that any bad feeling on his part was particularly important. When we were older I was annoyed that he never seemed very happy when I returned from a foreign trip and bragged about what a good time I had. I didn’t see anything significant behind this annoyance.

Once people began to inform me that he envied me and the life I led, I still wasn’t too concerned about it. After all, envy is the sincerest form of flattery. Also, I thought there was some truth to his complaint that our parents favored me. For me, this was simply a natural fact. Their attitude was unfair, but I felt that he had more responsibility for their attitude than I did. He didn’t start talking until he was four years old. If he wanted something he would point at it and say “ugh”. I’m not sure what benefit he saw in doing this, but he may have felt that he garnered more personal attention from my parents by playing this game. If so, he certainly succeeded, but not in the way he probably expected. My parents thought he was a little retarded, while my grandmother opined that he was tongue-tied and suggested that the flap of flesh under his tongue be clipped. Luckily no one followed through with this suggestion, but everyone came to the general conclusion that something was wrong with Bill. This point of view continued even after he finally began talking. No one knew that Bill had multiple Sclerosis until he was an adult, not even Bill. One early symptom of this disease that no one interpreted correctly was that food passed too slowly through his body. Sometimes he wouldn’t use the toilet for a week at a time. For some reason, my mother felt he was doing this on purpose. Of course, this extreme constipation often ended in an “accident”. My parents didn’t understand this behavior as a medical problem. Instead, they believed that he was intentionally refusing to follow their toilet training, and punished him severely for his “accidents”. Reasonably enough, he tried to avoid punishment by hiding his soiled underwear in various caches in and around the house. He was not very proficient at hiding anything and incriminating underwear was often found by my mother and father in various inappropriate locations. This, of course, led to even more severe punishments. As a baby, Bill exhibited a happy attitude, but as the above events ground away at him, he developed an attitude where he felt both guilty and bitter. My parents’ low expectations for him also became permanently established by these early problems.

Even as late as the last year of her life, my mother took me aside and told me that she believed Bill was retarded. This was not true. Bill did often ask people questions about things that most people, including Bill, commonly knew, but he asked them not to satisfy any real curiosity, but to lead into a conversation that might turn into a friendship. Unfortunately, his feigned interest in topics that were commonly known often made him seem disingenuous and strange to the people he most wanted to befriend. As a result, he grew up in an environment where no one took him seriously both inside or outside his family. What did I do to help my brother when all this was happening? Well, I kept my head down and tried to fly as much as possible under everyone’s radar. I didn’t pile on, but I didn’t help him in any manner either. Escape from my parent’s oversight was my top priority. I spent most of my home life battling my friends in the woods in mock wars or building sand ramparts for toy soldiers on the beach. Such an escape was not always easy. Our mother felt that we should always eat dinner “as a family” where we would be expected to tell each other what we had been doing during the day, (although I remember the discussions to center primarily around table-manner best practices). I always tried to gobble my food and head back outdoors, or to the TV set after we had bought one. While I was trying to escape my family, Bill was always trying to get back inside. At one point my mother was experiencing one of her emotional crises’ by screaming at us kids, slamming pots and pans on the stove, and breaking crockery. While I would hide in the dark shadows of a fort made out of a blanket-covered card table and pillows, I would follow her around the room in the sights of my BB gun from my gloomy refuge. (No, of course, I never had the courage to actually fire it. I’m not crazy.). My brother would respond to these outbursts very differently. He would make her coffee, and brush her hair. While my brother’s efforts to calm my mother were certainly better thought out than mine, they in no way improved her opinion of him. Ironically, even though my mother knew I didn’t like her much, she was continually expressing her pride in my accomplishments and her disappointment in his. Her attitude probably planted the first seeds of his envy towards me.

My father was less openly critical of Bill but spent more time with me teaching me how to hunt, shoot, and handicap thoroughbred races. To both my parents I remained the golden boy, always a little distant and out of reach, but for some reason, worthy of their respect. Bill, never bathed in such positive attitudes. Again, I never objected to this imbalance. I was so wrapped up in whatever I was doing that this injustice seemed perfectly normal. A week before my mother died, she made the family a last supper of the food she typically made when Bill and I were growing up. This last supper was marred by my mother berating him mercilessly for all his perceived shortcomings. Bill’s life took a turn for the better after our mother died. My father and I began to spend more time together driving around the country or visiting thoroughbred tracks. Bill noticed my new behavior and indicated that he wanted to be part of this new, happier, and less stressful family. Neither Dad nor I objected to his inclusion and the three of us started spending a lot of time together visiting our father’s youthful haunts, while Dad told us many humorous stories about his adventures and the characters he knew. For the next thirteen years, we finally became a close-knit family and I came to understand Bill a lot better. I’d like to think Bill finally saw me as a friend during this time, but there is evidence that this wasn’t the case. He continued to exhibit a complicated and paradoxical envy/admiration of me and my life of travel.

Five years after our mother died, Dad fell and broke his hip. I handled all the mechanics involving doctors, hospitals, and health insurance, while my brother moved in with Dad to run errands and take care of him after he was released from the nursing home. This solidified Bill’s new feelings of self-worth. While Dad quickly regained most of his mobility, Bill continued to live with him as a companion, though his assistance would again become important as Dad grew older. Bill finally had a purpose and someone who needed him. He was also able to focus more on Dad’s disabilities than on his own. Toward the end of his life, Dad admitted to me that he wouldn’t have been able to live independently during his final years without Bill’s help. During this period, Bill told Dad that he was his only friend. Since I had done so little to help Bill in the past, I felt there was some justice with his not seeing me as a friend. Dad felt very sad about Bill’s isolation and was a little embarrassed by Bill’s revelation. The thirteen years the three of us hung out together were probably the happiest years of Bill’s life. This happy interval ended when our father fell and reinjured his hip. At this point, Dad was 96 years old and did not want to suffer through another hip operation, and he elected to die rather than repair his hip. All his friends were dead, and his last years did not provide him with the same level of contentment that he had experienced when he was younger and more mobile. Both my mother and father died without shedding tears and stoically accepting their fate. I admire both of them for this attitude. My father’s death was the beginning of a downward spiral for Bill. His physical condition rapidly worsened after our father’s death. Bill stopped his exercises and long walks. I didn’t, however, perceive this decline at first. I traveled to Japan immediately after Dad died, but was only gone for 6 weeks and Bill seemed his usual self when I returned. I spent the next winter in South America, and again, I didn’t fully appreciate his physical decline or his increasing depression. It wasn’t until I was forced to spend the following winter with Bill during the COVID epidemic that I saw what was really happening to Bill. He was clearly lonely and worried about his declining health. During this time I would drive into Johnstown each night and we would watch the news, the stock market report, and the sports talk shows together. I think it was only at this point in time, that Bill finally came to depend on me. I now believe that his loneliness during my absences cast him back into the hopeless isolation he had lived through before our mother died. His attitude towards himself and me changed significantly during this time. He came to depend on my visits each evening to connect him with the world at large. I too enjoyed these visits since COVID had also isolated me from the world I usually traveled through. We both enjoyed each other’s company while discussing politics, the stock market’s activity, and our happier days with Dad. When the pandemic winded down and I decided to begin traveling again, I noticed that Bill became depressed and argumentative about my plans. I knew that my absence would now throw Bill into a very sorry state, but I had become restless during the pandemic and felt that I needed to travel if I wasn’t going to fall into a depression similar to Bill’s. His sadness was not simply a matter of my abandoning him. His MS had moved to his jaw which caused so much pain that he had a difficult time eating. His weight dropped significantly, and he became a walking scarecrow. Because I knew my travel plans were making him unhappy and I tried to make it up to him by taking him on several trips close to home. The first trip was to New York City where his physical weakness became very evident. He had been telling me that he was walking every day, and would have no problem sightseeing in New York. This was not true. I wanted to introduce him to Times Square and led him from the Port Authority through the Square to our hotel on Lexington avenue. He soon became exhausted. He tried his best to keep going because he didn’t want to be a burden. He might have felt that if he could keep up with me, I would continue to take him to new places if I believed he could still travel. During our walk, however, we stopped several times when he could find a place to sit down and rest. The next day, I proposed a double-decker bus trip through Manhattan and Brooklyn which he enjoyed very much. He never complained about his obvious exhaustion during this trip and kept telling me he was fine. It was his first and only trip to Manhattan, though had often heard me tell stories about “the city’s” wonders. He felt that the trip gave him an opportunity to experience some of the adventures that had been denied him but given to me. I later took him on several trips to Vermont where we visited a covered bridge museum and a used book store located in a country barn on a dirt road where I often bought my books. He tried to convince me that his condition was no worse than it ever was by engaging in long conversations with the people working at these spots and always was the last to want to leave, He continued to try to prove to me that he was always perfectly capable of traveling anywhere I could take him. The highlight of our final summer together was the James Taylor/Jackson Browne concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center towards the end of August 2021. Both Bill and I were long-time fans of James Taylor, we both found Jackson Browne to be extremely entertaining. Bill said it was the best concert he ever attended. After the concert, Bill rapidly limped ahead of me back to the car. When he reached the car he turned and proudly crowed, “See, I found your car”. The next month he told me in an offhand way that his doctor was worried about his continuing loss of weight, and he began to stumble when he got up from his easy chair. We took our annual Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant where we had previously celebrated it with our father. We had to leave early because his jaw hurt too much for him to finish his dinner. After this, he entered into a deep depression that continued until I left for South America on December 2nd. I, of course, knew that he might not be alive when I returned, but I had previously bought an apartment in Medellin and did not currently have a deed for the property or any other proof that I owned the apartment. I was sending money to my Colombian lawyer each month to pay for the apartment’s utilities, and she was charging me an enormous amount for this minor service. I lacked the resident’s visa that would allow me to open a bank account and pay my own bills, and the visa application process was long and complicated. I had to leave Bill behind to permanently establish myself in Colombia. Yes, I knew that my absence would increase Bill’s loneliness and only make his condition worse, but I tried to mitigate this situation by contacting a friend of mine who graduated with Bill from high school and had also been one of Bill’s friends, though they hadn’t had much contact after Bill began exhibiting more of his  MS disabilities. I asked my friend to visit Bill, monitor his condition, and help him out in any other way he could. He did a fine job, and I owe much to this friend. I also contacted a woman from Bill’s church with whom Bill had a secret crush. As Bill’s health declined he often complained that he didn’t have a girlfriend, but was too shy and uncertain to ever broach the subject with her. She was someone, however, who was concerned about Bill’s condition and agreed to help Bill while I was gone. Unfortunately, she sometimes panicked when Bill began falling and often saw him as initially being at death’s door even though he would live for three months more. If he needed hope that he would soon recover, she wasn’t the person who could provide this. I also continued to contact Bill several times through telephone calls and WhatsApp messages and video calls. Bill fell in the same spot in his apartment where Dad had fallen at the end of his life about a half hour before my ride to the airport was due to arrive. I helped him up. He waved me off and groggily made his way back to his bed. I think my leaving for South America made him weaker by undermining his belief in his ability to carry on alone. He, of course, refused to admit this. I called him later that day from the Miami airport and he sounded upbeat and unconcerned about his fall even though he had received a cut on his forehead. I wanted to believe him. A few days later he fell in his apartment’s parking lot, could not get up, and was taken to the hospital. His doctor felt he should not return to his apartment and instead be placed in assisted living for observation and physical rehabilitation. My two surrogates managed to get him admitted to the county infirmary where they had trained staff who could care for him and exercise his weakening muscles. He liked the physical rehab which he felt was making him stronger but complained that the food was often served cold. After a month there, he checked himself out. This was probably his downfall, but I can’t fault him too much. Later when I visited the infirmary to pay his bill, I could see that it was an odiferous den of hopelessness and resolved that I too would rather be dead than survive in any such manifestation of assisted living After occupying his apartment for several weeks he fell again. He was not using the walker I had gotten out of a closet for him the day he first fell, nor the alert necklace that the infirmary had given him. No one knows how long he lay on the floor before a maintenance worker found him during an unscheduled visit. This was the beginning of the end for Bill. He was again taken to the hospital where he lay unresponsive in the emergency room. At first, the woman from Bill’s church who visited Bill there alerted me of his condition and thought he had had a stroke because he didn’t respond to her. I think he refused to talk because he knew he would never be going back to his apartment or his previous life and couldn’t deal with that fact. After a few days, he started talking to visitors again. He hadn’t had a stroke, but he soon contracted pneumonia, and even my friend who had been more optimistic about Bill’s condition up to this point, indicated that Bill had entered his final days. I called Bill to say goodbye. He answered the phone and contended that he was not as sick as everyone thought he was. I knew that wasn’t true. I told him that I considered him to be a true friend, and he began to cry. I told him that I would miss him as much as we both did our Dad, (which I certainly do), and would remember the good times we had spent together. I said, “Goodbye Bill”, and I heard a faint, subdued voice say “goodbye”. I immediately realized that I was making him feel worse and probably frightening him. My previous role was to challenge him to live a normal life and face life’s challenges hopefully and independently. I immediately changed my message: I told him I wanted him to fight his MS as he had so successfully done in the past and that he could do so again. I told him that I wanted to sit down with him in April when I returned to discuss how he wanted to divide up his possessions for when he actually would die in the distant future. He perked up and said, “Yes, I can beat this again!” My friend said that Bill improved for a day and then fell back into a weakened condition. He died two days later. I will miss Bill. I miss our political and financial discussions, our reminiscences of our childhoods, and of our times with Dad. I will even miss his envy and obsession with my good fortune. For the past 35 years, I’ve been a solitary traveler, (for the most part), but I never felt alone because wherever I was I knew I had a home where I could return and share my experiences and part of myself with my father and later my brother, (whether he wanted to hear them or not). That part of my life is over. Without realizing it I had become dependent on Bill’s admiration/envy of me. Today I am an orphan. I no longer have a home, and must forever navigate foreign waters where I will sail invisibly and unenvied until the day that I too will drown.