What kind of example will that set for my children?
Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006 5:21 pm
Check out my website:

It's because I don't like him very much; in fact most of the time I can't stand him. It's not because of anything in particular that he does, it's me. I know it's me. It's all wrapped up in my relationship with my father. I was the apple of his eye, his only child.

He loved me. He sang to me, and played with me, took me horseback riding…

I was two when he died, and he had been sick my whole life. But six months before he died, my brother Pat was born. I am sure to my little two year old brain, Pat was a usurper. Baby Pat stole the attention. Even back then I didn't care for him very much. I was always trying to get rid of him.

For example, when he was a newborn I stole him from his bed, and my mother woke up to find the cradle (my cradle by the way… The one my Grandpa had carved for me which didn't help matters, I'm sure) empty. She found me walking around, carrying my baby brother by the neck, dragging him along the hallway floor.

The other instance has become a family legend. I snuck into my parent's room and again stole him from his cradle. But this time I was crafty. This time I shut him in my bureau drawer. My mother woke up and began frantically searching for him. I refused to say where he was. My mother is deaf, so she couldn't hear his cry, and my father was so sick he couldn't get out of his bed.

She eventually found him.

Well Pat is all grown up now, and I still don't like him. That feeling has never gone away. I know it doesn't make sense. He's my brother and I do care about him. I just don't like him very much.

Pat is 24 now. And schizophrenic. He takes anti-psychotic meds, and isn't really functional as an adult. He's always been weird. He was an unhappy baby, because he was born at a sad time in our family and his birth wasn't the joyful thing it should have been. He was a colicky baby, a willful toddler, a weird child. He's always had a fascination with how things work, and with fire. He was always destroying toys, taking them apart and not being able to put them back together. He was always lighting fires.

He never quite "got" things. You had to explain everything over and over and over to him, and then MAYBE he would get whatever it was. He screamed and threw tantrums a lot.

A LOT.

He was held back in kindergarten. Then they let him move on to first grade even though he still wasn't ready. School was very difficult for him. He had a hard time reading. He struggled through and then gave up in high school.

When he was 18 things went really downhill.

He bounced from family member to family member, not ever staying more than six months anywhere because he was so difficult to live with.

He was lazy. He was argumentative. He had trouble sleeping at night. He would stay up all night, taking things apart and then sleep all day. When he lived with me, I woke up one morning to a gaping hole with dangling wires in the place where my thermostat used to be. My cupboard doors would all be open and every scrap of edible food in my pantry would be gone.

Another time, I was vacuuming the living room (with my brand new vacuum) and accidentaly bumped it into the fuseball table. Both fell apart. Sometime in the night before, he had taken all of the bolts out of the fuseball table, and all of the nuts off my vacuum. For no apparent reason.

He was also starting to hallucinate. He saw visions. He thought God spoke to him, through the news broadcasts on tv, and through his cd collection.

Once he was picked up on I-95 South by the state police. Instead of going to work that day, he decided to walk to New York because he thought something bad was going to happen there. (The thing that freaked me out, after the fact, was that this happened the last week of August, in 2001).

He thought we weren't his real family. He thought he was a prophet.

He talked about Allah, all the time.

We would hear him whispering at night, talking to the dog…

Anyway.

He eventually exhausted all of his welcomes, with everyone who took him in. And there was no where left for him to go.

He ended up homeless.

He wandered around Rhode Island for a while, and then my Aunt T and Uncle J took matters into their own hands. They found him an apartment and got him onto disability. By this time, he had deteriorated to the point where he couldn't really function on his own (if he ever could). He can't hold a job because he can't get himself up on time. He can't keep himself and his home clean because he doesn't know how to.

He isn't a bad person. He is actually a very nice person. He has a desperate need to be liked. He spends any money he has on buying people drinks, or dinner. Drugsor cigarettes. Because he wants them to like him. He would let anyone who called him "friend" stay at his tiny apartment, to the point where his neighbors complained about the rowdy crowd.

He ended up getting evicted.

Now he is living in a basement apartment in South County.

My mom just called me after her first visit there and she is really upset. She says it's dank and moldy. She said he lifted up his mattress and the under side of it is coated in black mold.

He's out in the woods, no bus route, no friends nearby, and he is very lonely.

She is thinking about finding him a studio apartment here in Pawtucket, because he would be able to get out, and be more mobile. Here there are buses and places he could work, and she could help him, and I could to.

So I am conflicted. I feel bad for him, trapped in a dank little place, with no company. But at the same time, he's a big responsibility. Which I am not sure I want… Which makes me feel awful.

In my heart, I think Pat can be semi-functional, if he has someone to come by in the morning and wake him up, someone to show him how to cook, someone to tell him to clean up, someone to tell him when to take a shower, when to wash his clothes, someone to take him to the grocery store and drive him to and from work.

And although my mom feels bad for him, I don't know if she can be that person… She works two and sometimes three jobs… I'm not sure she'll have the time!

And as bad as I feel, I'm just not sure if I want to be that person… Or even if I can be, seeing as how I'm a homeschooling mom, and I have three kids, two under two, AND I am trying to work from home!

And herein lies my dilemma.

Just because something makes life harder, because it is more difficult for you, that isn't a reason to not do it. What kind of example am I setting for my children, if I don't help a fellow human being, and my own flesh and blood, because it's too difficult? It's too much work?

Artwork © Jessica Galbreth