I have been thinking a lot about my brother lately.
I came across a picture of him. He was in our backyard, wearing a cropped t-shirt with a bowl haircut. He must have been in middle school. He has a slight smile on his face. But he looks if not happy, then at ease. He doesn’t look so guarded, so serious. In the photos that follow, the ones from high school, he rarely smiles. And if/when he does, it doesn’t appear genuine.
I have been thinking a lot about Jeremie the kid, my brother’s own inner wounded child.
I have been talking with a good friend of mine lately about the importance of healing our own inner child, acknowledging our wounds so that we can now revisit parent the kiddo within that—for whatever reason-didn’t get what she needed to from her parents as a child.
I shared this with my best friend, who also knew my brother. And she said that she wishes that she could give that young boy in the picture a hug.
I understand that.
I wish that I could too.
I am brought back to how…at least my father was older. At least his health had rapidly declined and he couldn’t breathed, had resumed drinking, his time was limited, and his self-destructive ways guaranteed he wouldn’t live much longer anyway.
But my brother—
I sometimes realize that in a few years I will have lived longer than he did. Barely middle aged. Passing at 43 years old.
He was mentally unwell, of course. But by all intents and purposes he had his whole life of ahead of him, at least a good portion of it. And his daughter’s life had just begun.
That is why it is so heart-wrenching to see these pictures of him as a kiddo. You see them, and you do—
You want to take him into your arms and comfort him. Reassure him that it will pass, and not to give up, give in, when it seems so dismal.
My brother was impulsive, emotional and sensitive, tortured by his own inner turmoil, certainly. Most of the times the pictures show that, later in life. Something about his eyes and his seriousness of his face, the lack of smile.
But this picture, he still maintains his goofy and childlike countenance.
It is hard to look at that, and then sit with the gravity of reality, of what would follow, how he would die, knowing he would choose to end his own life.
We spend a lot of time recovering from our childhoods. We have to. If we want to address our wounds and do the important work that we need to heal, then we have to face them.
My brother was impressionable, and while we both at points as children desperately wanted the emotional support and overt love and acceptance from our father that we wouldn’t get, that he couldn’t give us, swimming in his sea of alcoholism—
My brother needed it more. I had a mother who identified with me and consciously brought me up. I’m not saying she didn’t with my brother. Quite frankly, I’m not sure, since he is older and I was too young to remember or not around yet.
But like children also do often, we sought affirmation from the same-gendered parent. And my safe harbor was my mother. My brother sought my father.
But that was a dead-end, a path that like a swim race but one in which always seemed to have him either swimming in circles or treading water, his acceptance and validation and love, always and forever just a bit out of reach.
Later in life, as relationships do, their dynamics changed. But still, damage is done.
My brother was bullied and unstable, often in trouble in school, hanging with a crowd that wasn’t good for him.
It is hard not to wonder—what if things were different? What if my brother—my sensitive and emotional brother—got the affirmation he sought after from my father and it led to a securer sense of self within him? What if he was raised in a place in time and a community and family that encouraged him to get the mental health help he needed? What if he then he made different choices? And didn’t go running in circles? What if he could have identified with mom just a bit more to know—as I did—that these times of despair won’t always last and you’ve got to endure them because you won’t always feel this way even though you think that you will?
What if? Would he then still be here?
As is he not, and we cannot rewrite the story, and change the outcome—
I sit and stare at this sandy hair, grinning little boy and I wonder if he still exists somewhere, on some plane, in another dimension.
I hope he does and I hope he’s happy and at peace.