Bittersweet

All summer the West burned, the South succumbed to hurricanes and Covid, and the East Coast sobbed with rain and flash floods, as if nature itself was manifesting all the emotions whirling through me after my brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

When I talk about my relationship with my brother, I’m apt to say it’s complicated. After a lifetime lived with alcohol as his master, my relationship with him has been reduced to little more than a healthcare proxy and financial fiduciary to keep him from being homeless.

I wish I could say I feel more compassion for him now that he’s a toothless, emaciated, old man with pain in his gut, but if I’m honest, I resent the burden of handling his affairs, as well as the anxiety, regret, and disappointment his drinking spilled all over my life.

Recently, a friend challenged me that although I preach the sovereignty of God, I wasn’t trusting God with the brother he chose for me. Yes, I believe God is in control. Yes, I know I’m being selfish, but how do you change your feelings? They just are. And at that moment, I didn’t care.

I was so tired of the shadow of death. I needed to get off the merry-go-round of doctor appointments and trips to the Emergency Room, so I put on my pajamas in the middle of a Sunday afternoon and flopped on the couch to watch junk TV.

I clicked to a remodeling show called Save My Reno where in twenty minutes, a master carpenter and designer team up to help homeowners remodel ugly, dysfunctional rooms into beautiful spaces they couldn’t produce on their own.

As I watched uninterrupted, I recalled a time before TV remotes when my brother and I argued over what cartoon to watch. I clicked the dial to my show. He clicked to his. It was the battle of the dial until he left the room and returned with a kitchen carving knife. Needless to say, we watched his show, and even before he started drinking, even before I was old enough to understand the pain he carried, I had reason to fear instead of trust him.

You see, I was adopted as a baby, and spent the first six years of my life as an adored only child. My brother was four when he joined our family and had already been in two foster homes, one abusive. Of course, I didn’t know this as a child, but I was acutely aware of the new stranger who slept in the little bedroom next to my parents, and cried himself to sleep.

On the outside our family was the perfect Leave-it-to-Beaver home, but on the inside, I could never connect with him. We developed separate sets of friends, and by middle school, he was sneaking alcohol to his friend’s tree fort at the end of the street.

My thoughts turned back to the TV. As I clicked through YouTube, I stumbled upon a fabulous street busker, Allie Sherlock, singing “We’re Far from the Shallows Now.” Far from the shallows reminded me of the summer our family sailed a small boat to Martha’s Vineyard. It was a foggy day, and when we were out of sight of land, my father got out a chart, put my brother’s twelve-year-old hand on the tiller, and taught him how to navigate to the island we couldn’t see. I was amazed my brother could do it and terrified that my father had put the steerage of our tiny vessel in his untried hand.  

My binge watching concluded with a movie about the real life events behind the creation of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Apparently, Charles had a complicated relationship with his ne’er do well father because, after Dickens senior was put in debtor’s prison, Charles was sent to work as a child in a boot blacking factory. According to the movie, Dickens originally intended his short book to end with Scrooge meeting justice, for being a miser. Then his young house maid urged him to show both Scrooge and Tiny Tim a happy ending.

This reminded me of all the awkward holiday meals I spent with my brother and his family while we were both young marrieds back at our parents’ home. My brother would arrive already quietly inebriated, and crawl off to the basement or the garage to have another, then another beer to avoid his alcoholic wife’s relentlessly ragging. Finally, assembled at the table, I couldn’t eat fast enough to end the whole ordeal.

After a long day of escapist television, I finally went to bed where my brain and heart often do their best sorting.

Next morning, in that blurry space where dreams still make sense and daylight has not fully crept over the window ledge, I realized I was a Scrooge unwilling to forgive my emotionally crippled little brother for all the damage his alcoholism did to our family dynamic, and I asked God to renovate my heart in this final fluid space where my feet can’t touch the bottom.

Since my junk TV Sunday, I’ve talked to a hospice social worker about my complex feelings for my brother. I told her so much more than there’s space for here. She assured me, all my emotions are normal. We can carry both negative and positive sentiments at the same time, and neither invalidates the other. She told me this is all part of the grieving process, a process of resolving my relationship with my brother that will probably continue long after his death.

I share my experience because I know I’m not the only one, dealing with drinking, disease, and grief over all that alcohol can steal from those who consume it and those who try to love them.

You may be at a different stage in your relationship with your loved one and their addiction, but, I’m thankful for this last chance to show compassion I couldn’t conjure on my own, for the brother God chose to be mine.

However ragged our relationship, however bittersweet,

I’ve learned it’s never too late to love when love is not just a feeling, but a verb:

to show up, to put up, to never give up.

So, I encourage you dear readers with this. Now that he’s an old man close to the edge of the cliff, his once distant children have gathered around him with visits and phone calls as never before. He seems at peace with his disease and its outcome. We’ve shared old family photos of the Leave-it-to-Beaver elements of our childhood.

And yesterday, sitting next to my brother, quietly doing a puzzle together, we rejoiced that I found the top to the mast of the ship sailing into the sunset. And he found the lighted window in the distant mansion at the head of the bay.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21 (NIV)

Cover photo by Dikaseva on Unsplash