The kids and I are in the kitchen making gingerbread men for Family Home Evening when the phone rings. I answer it with sticky, flour-y hands, noting my mother’s name on the caller ID, feeling flustered by the interruption yet proud of myself for being in the middle of a cinnamon-scented pre-Christmas baking scene.
“Hi, Mom. I’m baking,” I say.
“George has disappeared,” she says.
George, my brother. Two-and-a-half years older than me. My only blood-tied sibling. My companion through years of family woes–our parents’ divorce, our mother’s remarriage, our struggles to manage life in a troubled blended family. He was the only one who really understood.
We both floundered as adolescents. But when my life took an upward swing in young adulthood, his kept spiraling downward. He was convicted of a felony at age 31. He served four years of a four-to-forty prison sentence, then was released on a writ of habeus corpus, 18 months ago. The state promptly filed an appeal, and the waiting began. Renting a one-room apartment and working two jobs, George lived a shell of a life, knowing any day that he could get a call from his lawyer telling him that the state’s appeal had been successful and that he would have to head back to prison.
He finally got that call last Thursday, my mom tells me. And nobody has seen him since.
My head spins as I try to absorb this news. My brother, the convict-turned-fugitive. It’s like something out of a movie. Or a nightmare.
When I hang up the phone I turn to my kids. The older ones know something is wrong. I tell them, as simply as I can.
“Uncle George is missing,” I say. “He was told he had to go back to prison, so he took off. Nobody knows where he is.”
Long pause.
“Will he come here?” my 12-year-old son asks, round-eyed.
“No, honey,” I said. “He knows better.”
As the evening turns into nighttime I think a lot, but don’t feel a lot, about my brother. I am too numb to cry over him, rage at him, or worry much about him. But my thoughts keep circling around him, always coming back to the same place: the last time we spoke.
It was over a year before the gingerbread men. Fall, 2005. Thomas, my then-newborn, was in the NICU. My mom was living at my house, taking care of my kids so I could spend my days at the hospital. One morning, pre-breakfast, George called. I saw his name on the caller ID and knew he wanted to talk to Mom. I had no room in my life right then for an intrusion, for even a conversation. I was stretched paper-thin by my own crisis, and I resented him taking any measure of our mother away from me right then. So I let the answering machine pick up the call. No luck–he hung up and called right back. I gave in, greeting him with clipped words, then handing the phone to Mom as quickly as I could.
In the months that followed, I thought of George from time to time, wondered how he was doing, what he was thinking and feeling. I got brief updates from my mom. I considered calling him, just to say hi. But I never did.
I had good excuses, of course. My own life was complicated enough as it was. I didn’t feel like discussing it with my brother, and I was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear about it either. And the same was true from his end. There was little for him to say, and little I wanted to hear.
Still, though, as I relive our seconds-long exchange from last year, I am sorry. Sorry I didn’t talk to him, just for a minute. Sorry I didn’t call him weeks or months later. I could’ve been straight up with him. “There’s nothing to say, but I just wanted you to know that I love you.”
We’ve said such things to each other many times in the past. I hope I have the chance to do so again.
Read Erin Brannigan’s poem, Brotherly Love.
Do you have an especially needy loved one in your life? Do you share the mixed feelings described in the poem? How do you find the right balance of giving and withholding? How do you protect yourself without becoming hardened and cold?
Many members of my extended family seem to struggle. Few are active in the church. Many are dealing with complicated problems. The most difficult thing for me is to remember the hard times in my own life, and to know that there is no well meaning churchy sort of advice that I could have heard then. Having experienced two sides of life, I feel like I understand to some extent where those loved ones are coming from, but I can’t think of any way to convey that there is hope, that there is another way, that would seem credible to them. They tend to feel judged or to take offense simply because I choose to live differently than they do. I pray alot. I know that I am where I am because of the grace of God, and that makes it even harder to watch them struggle, and to wonder if, and when, it will be their turn.
I sometimes wonder if I am the problem child in my family. Everyone seems to get along so well, and I am like a strange little alien descending out of a cloud whenever there are family get-togethers.
I’m not speaking from an “out-of-the-church” standpoint, but there are many different family members in many different families who require enormous emotional investment, whether they are in the church, in polite society, in the know, whatever. Angie has it right. Pray a lot. That’s pretty much my new answer to everything.
With a recent minsunderstanding in a friendship of mine I had to pray in order to be in the right spirit to go and make amends. To say I forgave, to ask forgiveness. I held onto the anger and resentment for longer than I should have, and as soon as I started to pray for my friend, instead of look for ways to justify how I was feeling or focusing on the needs I had that weren’t being met, then I had this overwhelming out-pouring of love. It clearly came from the spirit and in our conversation I felt enlightened about the boundaries I needed to create so that we could continue our friendship, without similar hurt in the future. I was amazed at the specificity with which the spirit instructed me and how my heart felt truly overflowing. I realized it wasn’t my love I had to give to her, but in the right place I could be the instrument for the Savior to give his love to her. I think it can only ever really work if we plead for His help.
Thanks, Angie, Justine, and Heather, for your comments. You’re right, prayer is a must. It helps me, too, to remember that while I’m responsible for doing what I can and should, I’m not responsible for doing what I can’t or shouldn’t. I tend to be “all or nothing” and expend way too much of myself trying to save someone–then I withdraw when I realize it won’t work.
Kathy–If I could answer your fabulous questions, I would be a much more complete person! The truth is, there are no answers that are clear-cut for everyone, and most of the time even the answers I receive for myself are hazy. In my experience, I have to function with “enlightened self-interest” in order to maintain my own boundaries and yet not lose my sense of compassion for my loved ones. And finding that “enlightenment” is where I struggle because acting in my own self-interest is easy.
I’m so sorry about George, but just as importantly, I’m sorry that you can’t turn back time and do what you wish. Maybe learning to cope with our inability to do everything perfect, the first time, is something we can all get out of this.
How do you protect yourself without becoming hardened and cold? That is a good question. And how do you deal with it when others consider you hardened and cold because you are protecting yourself? I’m feeling weighed down by the seeming impossibilty of resolving some family issues in this life. While I have a hope of resolving them in the next, this life is a long, long time. And just after I’ve resigned myself to acceptance, that same wretched hope always seems to creep in and make me think that maybe things will get better, when years of experience have told me otherwise. Am I denying the power of the Atonement and the possibility of change, or am I just being realistic?
There is just no escaping family, which can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a lot easier for me to feel at peace when I’m not in the same room for dinner.
“I ache with caring
gape with pity
while he’s still safely distant
and yearn to open all I have
all I am
to him
my brother
Then I hear that engine
coughing, missing
stopping
in front of my house
my space
and my heart snaps shut
shrivels and withdraws”
I have yet to learn how to hold on to those feelings that come so generously at a safe distance. Though it’s a sad consolation, I’m glad I’m not alone.
Maralise–that’s one of the hardest things for me–to set boundaries which others resent. It’s hard enough for me to say (whether verbally or not), “This is what I want/need.” When people resist, and push my guilt buttons, I really flounder. But I’m learning.
And Melissa, I empathize. Truly.
I don’t know the answer to your question about doubt vs. pragmatism. All I know is that I do better when my hopes center on something I can control. Like, I have hope that the spirit will guide me in my relationships, and that I might even do what the spirit tells me to do.
I have hope that I will manage the frustrations that come and be able to forgive. In other words, I have hope that I can be happy even if others never change. But again, all of this is easier to feel from a distance than in the moment.
I’m grateful you shared your perspective. I, too, am glad I’m not the only one!
Hi Kathy,
You don’t know me, but I feel like I know you. I hope you don’t mind I read your blog a lot - sometimes I feel like an intruder, but usually I just love what you write so I can’t stay away. I have 3 kids, a nephew with DS (which is how I discovered your blog) and a sibling who has had 2 involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations in the past 2 years (which I don’t tell anyone about). I have tried to help (sort of), but have always rationalized to myself that I am busy with my own life and problems, let someone else do the tough stuff. A voice inside me has been nagging me to find the time to call but I haven’t in months - and now I read your post. Thanks for the reminder; sometimes God works in interesting ways. I also am glad I’m not alone. Also thanks for letting me listen in.
Lisa, I’m so glad you posted. I know that nagging feeling well. And I know how hard it can be to follow it. I will keep you in my thoughts.
And: No need to feel like an intruder–blogs are there to be read. You are a welcome visitor!
For me this post brings up the issue of help, and how it’s so hard to give it, and receive it. I don’t know why it’s such a complicated concept–I wish it weren’t. But it’s hard to know what help is actually helpful; and it’s hard to accept it sometimes, as well.
Like others, prayer is the only thing I am sure of as being helpful, for both myself and the person I wish to aid.
That whole concept of help is so tricky. The things I feel that my difficult relatives need to “help” them are very rarely the same things they want. For me, living close to my extended family for the past couple of years has been process of learning to heal myself–to work on the attitudes that need to be changed and to become more open and loving in spirit–even though I don’t get to help them in the ways I would like. I still have this fantasy that someday I’ll be refined enough or spiritually attuned enough to be able to say and do things that will bring them peace and healing. It hasn’t materialized yet.