I set my brother Andrew up with a blog back in the Spring and he wrote quite a bit for a short while, although he stopped abruptly on June 24th. It’s a struggle for me to write about him for so many reasons, and it’s probably best to let him speak for himself whenever that’s possible. I encourage you to take a look at what he was thinking about and struggling with because I think there’s a lot of wisdom in it.
You can never tell a person’s story completely, and you certainly do them a grave injustice to reduce them to simple labels. My brother was many great and admirable things, but he also suffered from depression and he eventually sought solace and comfort in alcohol for problems that he felt he was powerless to overcome. And, one by one, the addiction took from him all the things he loved and cared about, including in himself. He sought treatment many times and waged a battle that lasted, I guess, about eight years.
By the time we got him into treatment for the last time, he had lost everything and had earned the estrangement of the people who cared about him the most. Honestly, at that point, I think he had days if not hours to live. But, where other rehabilitation centers had failed, his last one succeeded. As he explained it to me, the difference was that they gave him unconditional love, and that was the one thing that he needed to believe that redemption was possible and worth seeking.
They patched him together as best as they could. And then he left to live in a recovery house where he spent the last eight months of his life. He came by our house often. Last week, he looked after his nephew while we went to the Memorial Service for our friends’ mother. You can see on his Facebook page that he made a real impact on the folks he lived with at the recovery house. They say he was a “good friend” who “would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.” Sometimes, he’d turn down an invitation to come to dinner because he wanted to make sure a friend had a ride to work.
He spent most of his days at the library looking for the kind of work he needed to meet his obligations to his family, but those kinds of jobs don’t come easily to a 55 year old man who has burned his references and is in ill health. He focused on that and on his recovery and on making a positive difference in the lives of the people he interacted with on a daily basis.
He told me that after a lot of effort he had managed to get on Medicaid, but I don’t think he ever went to a doctor. If he had, he might have known how near to death he was.
There’s a lot more to my brother than his last sad months, but these were the last miles that I walked with him. And, in the end, what mattered to him were the kinds of things he wrote about on his blog.
In one of his posts, he ruminated on a song by Ray LaMontagne that spoke to him for obvious reasons.
Empty
By Ray LaMontagneShe lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walks through the garden rows
With her bare feet laughing
I never learned to count my blessings
I choose instead to dwell
In my disasters
I walk on down the hill
Through grass grown tall
And brown and still
It’s hard somehow
To let go of my pain
On past the busted back
Of that old and rusted Cadillac
That sinks into this field
Collecting rain
Will I always feel this way
So empty
And estranged?
and of these cut throat busted sunsets
These cold and damp white mornings
I have grown weary
If through my cracked and dusty
Dime store lips
I spoke these words out loud
Would no one hear me?
Lay your blouse across the chair
Let fall the flowers
From your hair
And kiss me
With that country mouth
So plain
outside the rain is tapping
On the leaves
To me it sounds like
They’re applauding us
The quiet love
We’ve made
Will it always feel this way
So empty
So estranged?
well I looked my demons in the eyes
Lay bare my chest
Said do your best
To destroy me
I’ve been to hell and back
So many times
I must admit
You kinda bore me
there’s a lot of things
That can kill a man
There’s a lot of ways
To die
Yes, and some already did
And walk beside me
there’s a lot of things
I don’t understand
So many people lie
It’s the hurt I hide that fuels
The fire inside me
Will I always feel this way
So empty
So estranged?
Here’s part of what he had to say about this song.
I believe people will relate who have experienced loss, trauma, profound disappointment, addiction, unrequited love, wear from the windchill of life, or just about anything that throws a person inward with a belief they are alone with their problems, solutions and being. The converse is someone who is continually directed towards relationships with others and outside things and to things greater than themselves. I know that for me, a lifetime of concern over personal and political battles, especially recent ridiculously needless battles, has too often left me weary, hopeless and bored.
I also believe that feeling is not necessary.
Coming up, I will be posting thoughts which may describe a simpler path for staying awake in every moment in an easier state; more pliable but unyielding to life’s hard-edged conflicts. I think I can safely say I have spent many, many of my adult waking hours developing awareness and skills around it. I have in no way been always successful. In fact, I have failed beyond my wildest imagination, tempting total ruin. But having learned and applied a few lessons from my failures, I also have experienced some serene success. Your mileage may vary.
During Andrew’s last full day on Earth, President Obama was in West Virginia talking about addiction. He was primarily concerned with the opioid epidemic, but that was also a concern of Andrew’s because in the circles of recovery we are burying friends and acquaintances on a near-daily basis who are succumbing to opioids. Nearly every time I talked to him over the last few months he began by telling me the story of someone else who had relapsed, overdosed and died. Most of the people he was devoting himself to helping were trying to recover from an opioid addiction. If he’d want anything, he’d want people to understand the severity of the problem our nation has with depression and addiction, and how inadequate our response has been so far.
In fact, this desire of his is the sole reason why I am writing this at all, because at a time like this the inclination is to gloss over the tragic stuff, the embarrassing stuff, and to celebrate the good times and the accomplishments and the best that a person was able to offer.
But, I’ll tell you, Andrew had eight months sober. He was fighting. He was trying to do the right thing every day. And he was giving the best he had to offer. The end of his story is tragic but it should be inspiring, too.
I want people to know that he had recaptured the good in himself and he was applying it to help others.
There are countless people out there right now who are fighting the same fight, behind the same eight ball, at the bottom of the same unscalable pit. And they need your love and a helping hand, and a system that can find a way to give them some support and medical attention.
I’m proud of Andrew. I’m proud and honored to have walked these last miles with him.