Taking Issue

My sister, who is a year-plus older than me, finally found my blog and after reading some of the entries about my family took issue with my words. In some ways she is right, but mostly because of her perspective on the family and the events surrouinding each of our lives with our parents. We have both different experiences with them and now different views of that experience.

Hindsight is great for somethings, but mostly it's really unimportant to the world as it is right now. We are the results of our history, the experiences compounded on our character, personality and temperament. So while understanding those experience is a good thing and often quite useful and helpful, it's the act of hindisight that blurs the facts and reality.

That's because we don't remember anything completely and accurately. We remember snippets and snapshots of the experiences, people, places, events, etc. and we recreate them when we want to remember then or they want to find our consciousness. That's why they change with time. Only those from our youth are the most certain to be honest from what we knew and did then.

And that's what my sister pointed out, the facts I wrote weren't complete or accurate. In part she is right, I assumed from conversation with my parents of what they did, and from what I heard or saw around them. In that respect I'm wrong and apologize for my misunderstanding and memory.

That said, however, my words as written don't change the ideas and thoughts in them. My Dad had a failing health soon after he retired and was on numerous medications for conditions and medications to counter the side-effects or interactions of the medications. At one time he took 11 medicines daily, about half of them for the side-effects or interactions. They got them down to just over half.

But it didn't change the slow progressive decline I saw in him the few times we met or spoke over those years. By age 74 he was just tired, a shell of his former self. While he was mentally alert, I could sense he was aware of the end on the horizon, and why he just wanted to get to his 75th birthday. And then he succumbed to the accumulation of physicial problems.

And as much as my sister wants to exonerate him for being alive and fighting, to me and what I saw, he simply quit once he made his goals. He had no other reason to get up in the morning with all the pain and life as he was. I can't argue with that, some days I get glimpses into this place and will face my own decline and realization of the end.

As for my brother, I won't change anything I said. I loved him and miss him. We had some good conversations about life and living with our parents and their expectations. He drank from high school to his last days, he was a functional alcoholic. He also smoked 1-2 packs a day from high school to his last breath. He was looking at a heart-double lung transplant or death, and he choose the latter.

His reality and problem, as they say, was Dad. As the oldest son he was what our parents wanted, to succeed. He did, even being the CEO of AMC Theater Corporation for a short time after he negotiated the buyout by a California firm. And then he wasn't and life wasn't the same for him and to Dad. But by then the pressure had reached the point of no return, and all that was left in his mind was playing the hand he had.

He didn't have to do that, something we discussed many times over the years. But I also knew while arguing for him to change careers, I also knew he couldn't. Dad wouldn't let him or face what I did when I was 19, being effectively forgotten by Dad. But even then he already was. He was executer of the estate and knew the details in the will, and knew all he got from Dad was a thank you.

I didn't fair much better as he told me once. Our sister was the apple of his eye, not unusual for Dads and only one daughter. While my brother got a lot from our parents over the years (college, help moving, big wedding and honeymoon, help with the home and stuff for it), he knew it came with a price in return. Our sister got just over about half that from the folks. Dad told me he wanted to giver her and son-in-law more but didn't have the money, which my Mom partly discovered why in his desk after he died.

And I got shown the front door after a year of college partly paid by him, my brother and me (1/3 each), which was why I worked fulltime during college and they didn't have to. And over the years I got two loans, one of which I paid back to her for her medical expenses. That's it, except, the deal, more financial help if I moved back home and did what he wanted and expected of me.

I didn't and he made his view clear, and never let me forget he saw me as a failure despite some good accomplishments for the family. I served my country. I didn't ask for money for college once I back after the service. I got the first masters degree in the family. I even was promoted to one grade higher than him in the federal government.

But I also got the first real divorce in the family - the first one was the result of domestic abuse and obviously, to them, excuseable. I married a woman they didn't initially like, only barely warmed up to during our 13 year marriage (last 2 separated), and then blamed for the divorce. And I never moved home or went home unless my brother was there for reunions. Even after rejecting me, he still expected me to do what he wanted.

In the end all of it didn't matter to him, and I never really heard an explanation. He took that and something he never said to me, "I love you.", to his grave. I will never know why and will take that to my grave.

If only for a moment

I have moments. Some days, but mostly very few and not often these days, especially the last two years. Sometimes all I want is to feel physically good and mentally ok, a few moments when the body and mind seem fine with the world. Funny almost all of these have occurred in spring or fall rain storms when I can stand on the deck and feel, hear and smell the constant rain against the earth and against my body and mind.

I like to put on my North Face expediton rainsuit (pants and coat) and stand outside in the hard, intense rain, surrounded by nothing but the sound, smell and sight of it. Lost in it. Lost within it. It doesn't care about me, only I'm the object it hits before shedding onto the ground around me. It doesn't feel me, but I feel it.

And there in those moments I feel ok. For a few moments all physical and mental problems are washed away with the rain. Shed like the raindrops off the raincoat onto the ground, into the ground and away back to the earth where it started.