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I spoke with my nephew trying to get information about my brother’s condition (see previous post). I felt like I was pulling teeth. At first I thought maybe he was pretty much in the dark, and then I remembered my mother and brother are secret keepers, not open people like me, so maybe my nephew was protecting the family secrets. I really doubt that. I don’t think he knows much. That brings up a whole other set of questions.

No sympathy

karmaMy nephew had little if any sympathy for his dad. He said his father has no friends, no activities, no interests, no hobbies, no nothing. He’s completely sedentary with watching TV and reading a book the only things he would consider doing.

He said his dad was so deeply addicted to painkillers — Oxycontin or anything in the opiate family — that he would require hospitalization to be medically withdrawn from them. He takes them — a lot of them in mega doses.

When I was so appalled by what he was telling me he lamely said “Well, maybe it is time for an intervention.”

He went on to explain his dad really does nothing — to the point his dad had confessed that he was lucky he was allowed to be employed as long as he was because he’d pretty much quit working the last few years and didn’t do anything.

My brother the OCD workaholic sat around and did nothing??? I know he’d had a variety of health problems for the last 10 years. Atrial irregularities that had led to a series of ablations. Bell’s palsy. Now peripheral neuropathy. I think they finally determined it all may have started with Lyme disease and his problems could be a result of that not being diagnosed. And these were the things I knew about and I know very little.

It sounded like somewhere along the way my brother had simply given up. He mentioned to me how sorry he felt for his wife — he said for the last 10 years he had basically needed assisted living and she was his caretaker. From the age of 55 to 65 her viewed himself as a virtual invalid?

Yet his wife was out of town on a trip with her sisters when he called and he had driven himself into Philadelphia for a doctor’s appointment while under the influence of hard core pain medication. Something didn’t add up.

The irony of the entire conversation with my nephew? I had more sympathy for my brother’s plight than his own son did. But then, his son doesn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle that I have. And his dad is still actively saying ugly things to both he and his wife. No a recipe for understanding and sympathy.

I feel the title for this post may more aptly be “Fall of the Golden Child”.

Why it all bothered me

If finally dawned on me why the conversation with him had been so distressing to me. It was talking to someone who was screwed up on drugs. It’s an extremely painful point to me — I had heard my brilliant son call me too many times sounding slurred and totally stupid. Drugs make you stupid and my brother had allowed it to happen to him.

And it wasn’t just my son. I had been with my mother as well when she popped so many Valium that I had to lead her around while she was literally drooling stupid. It happened several times with me out in public and I don’t know what she did when she was home alone. Once when flying back from Washington, DC after meeting my brother and his wife so we could all tour around my mother’s old haunts from her time of serving there  in the SPARS during WWII she started taking Valium. I asked her to please stop and she wouldn’t. She ended up do dazed and dopey I had to lead her to the flight and people were asking me what was wrong with her. I was so livid about what she’d done I was telling people “She’s f@%#ed up on Valium.”

Benzodiazepines were definitely the drug family of choice for my son and mother. She took Valium, klonopin, xanax, ativan and tried to convince everyone it was for her “heart condition.” Yeah, right. What she had was panic attacks. A problem I seemed to be growing into — even though I can’t for the life of me figure out why now when my life is relatively calm, after all I’d been through before. Maybe I was stressed to the max so much before it kept my tolerance up and now my tolerance has dwindled. Maybe it’s PTSD.

I knew I was plop in the middle of two generations with an addiction to benzos and have sworn to never take any under any circumstances. I have informed my doctor of that. My mother’s brother had been a full blown alcoholic. My mother had told me her mother allowed no alcohol in the house due to abuse from her father when he was drinking. I know I drink too much. There was no doubt addiction runs in the family.

So maybe my brother had stumbled into opiates being his drug family of choice. I know he was a big fan of Xanax and had been pushing them at my mom and I when my father died. I declined. They both numbed themselves out with them.

The thing that got me the most? He was the one who had everything to live for. He had a wife he adored and who I assumed loved him. He had two kids. He had seven grandchildren. I ended up alone with a dead child and I manage to keep going and work at keeping both my brain and my body active.

But I go back to right before my dad died. My quiet father talked to me for 3 hours and part of what he told me was about my brother. He said my brother was so stressed that he had been sent to a psychiatrist for help and walked out when the doctor asked about his wife and refused to go back. Dad worried it was going to kill him if he didn’t deal with the issues that were eating away at him. Dad also told me my brother was absolutely freaking out about dad’s bad health and was convinced he was going to die young. Dad pointed out how much more aware we were — he didn’t know that smoking and eating a high fat diet was going to kill him. We were educated and knew how to eat and take care of ourselves.

It kind of sounded like my brother didn’t know the “taking care of ourselves” part.

Issues

So what were the issues rumbling around in my head (and heart) and not feeling comfortable?

  1. My brother being addicted to pain medication and giving up
  2. Wasting his intelligence (a thing I may value about all things)
  3. Fear I have hereditary tendencies to addiction and health problems
  4. Karma…

Karma

I kept thinking here is a man who never hesitated to inflict cruelty and pain on others — even his own children at times. And he had a disorder that kept him in so much perceived pain that he had basically blown his life away with pain killers.

Whoa. If this is karma at work I promise to be a good girl and treat people the way I wish to be treated. I don’t want crap like that coming back at me!

So  sad really. Here is a man with a brilliant mind, a former jock, for cripes sake he was like the most popular and handsome guy in high school. While it took him 18 years to get a degree, once he did he moved up into really significant positions. And what I’m thinking is that he’s never really believed in his own value and it’s chipped away at him his entire life until he’s been reduced to what he is now. Man — who would have thought this would be the outcome for a golden child?

I’ve said it before and I will reiterate it now — while growing up the scapegoat of a narcissistic mother was a bitch and has left me damaged (hence no long lasting relationships) I would rather be the scapegoat than the golden child. I do live by the golden rule and treat people well. While I struggle I keep my butt in motion and keep going emotionally with the hope that things will someday be better as far as relationships. And if they don’t get better at least I’m learning things and doing interesting things along the way.

I have only pity for my brother. Well, and a considerable amount of distrust. He was nice the last couple times we’ve spoken, but I know he can go on the attack on a whiff of perceived insult. Sad if drugged and stupid finally makes him a decent person to communicate with.

So the conversations with my brother will serve as a cautionary tale for me. There but for the grace of whatever, go I. I had better be aware and watch myself or I could end up just like him.

I heard my cell phone vibrating over where it was charging at 8:30 in the morning. I walked over to see what was going on and since it wasn’t a number I recognized I tentatively, and perhaps a l little hostilely, said hello.

“Hi Brook. You don’t sound like yourself.”

Oh crap – it was my brother.

I had not seen or spoken to my brother since the day he and his family swept into my mother’s house to scavenge was things he wanted and then quickly disappeared with absolutely no offer of help in clearing out her house after her death. At the time I sat down and cried. I had really hoped someone would help me with that daunting task since it was breaking my heart to throw my mother’s life away. And I didn’t even like her. He was the one who thought she was the world’s best mom. But I digress.

Several months earlier I had emailed asking to have our parents’ photo albums for a while so I could scan some of the images. He shot back a snotty response “why should I think I’ll ever get them back?” Here I’ll point out that I was the one who insisted he have the albums since my son had died and I had no one to pass them on to. He should have them since he had kids. But I wasn’t to be trusted with borrowing them for a bit. Funny – I sort of thought they belonged to both of us. I digress again.

I was happy with the “no contact” relationship I have with my brother. I heard enough horror stories of things he said and did to his son and his family to keep me firmly of the opinion that he not someone I want to allow in my life – it will bring only nastiness and ugliness and now that my mother is no longer here I have no need to go there. So you can imagine my shock when I inadvertently answered his call.

He had sent me a follow up email a few months ago saying he was sorry for what he’d said about the albums and that he thinks of me every day and hopes I’m doing well. My responding thought was “Funny – I never think of you and when I do it’s how glad I am that I don’t have anything to do with you.” Petty, but true.

He called to let me know that a cousin of ours had gone in for bypass surgery and had gone into a coma and wasn’t expected to survive.

We also needed to talk about mineral rights that our mother had left to us jointly since we needed to negotiate another lease. Fine.

old-ageWhile he wouldn’t fill in details because of the vastness of the subject, he said the last 10 years had not been good for him and his health had been one disaster after another. He was calling my on his cell phone sitting in a parking lot at a hospital before he went into a psych eval that was required before they would do a nerve blocking procedure for peripheral neuropathy.

Yikes.

He’d been on massive pain killers for years to the point he’s lost a lot of cognitive function. No memory anymore. No kidding – what did he expect pain medication to do? I could tell he had trouble talking and was stunned by his lack of memory. You have to keep in mind that both he and I had been blessed with very high intelligence. It horrified me to see his muddled under layers of pain medication.

He was absolutely miserable and while he didn’t come out and say it I could tell he didn’t want and didn’t think he’d live much longer. For crying out loud – the man is only 65. I know 80 year olds that are always on the go.

But at least he was nice during the conversation. He reiterated his apology and when he was clearly going to belabor the point I cut him off and told him he shouldn’t worry about it.

He told my filled with regret he was. That he’d traveled too much during his childrens’ childhoods and he’d missed too much of them. He said the terrible thing about being retired is that he had so much time to think about all the things he did wrong and all the things he should have done.

Wow.

I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the most depressing conversations I have ever been party to. Immense pain, horrible regret, no hope.

I really believe in karma and if this was karma in action it scared the ever loving crap out of me.

If this is a function of genetics it also scared the crap out of me that I could have these tendencies as well. Whatever good grace had allowed me to avoid this path I silently uttered a huge “thank you!”

I felt like a gray cloud was hanging over me all day so I decided in the afternoon to call my nephew and find out what the heck is going on.

 

I recently spent an afternoon visiting with my nephew and his wife. I don’t see them often because I worry it will cause them problems with my brother who has such obvious disdain for me. And I have to be honest — it seems like anything I tell my nephew that makes it’s way to my brother seems to come back at me as a hammer he can use to beat me over the head. Granted it’s only via email since we never speak, but it’s upsetting nonetheless.

My nephew and his wife are this wonderful couple who truly love each other and have so much love in their hearts that after having four children they are now taking in foster kids. They have a house full of happy kids. I admire these two more than I can describe here.

Horror Stories

When my nephew was out of the room I was filled in on how things go with his parents. They live on the east coast when when they fly in to visit my brother says he’s too tired and stays at their hotel room while my sister-in-law comes to their home to visit. What???

I asked if his health is that bad. He’s had a lot of health issues that quite frankly I credit to internalized meanness and he’s very overweight. I’m informed his health isn’t great, but it’s more his attitude. He acts like he’s on death’s door all the time.

But apparently it’s a blessing he stays away since he feels the need to tell them they have ruined their oldest son’s life and stolen any chance of success from him. Why? Because they don’t have him playing baseball. Now he won’t be able to get a scholarship and go to college and end up in a high paying successful career… like his grandfather.

You want to hear the funny part? The son is not athletic, he is by no means a sports wiz. He goes out and plays with his friends and has a great time, but has no interest in getting on a baseball team that would require him to play at least five days a week. Poor kid doesn’t realize that he’s doomed to failure now.

Need I mention that my brother played baseball? But he didn’t get a scholarship for sports. He was good enough to play both basketball and football, but not good enough to qualify for a scholarship in either. So where does he get this stuff?

When my brother does come around she often has to smile, grab her keys, and say she has errands to run so she can escape the constant criticism of what they are doing with their lives. My brother still bitches at them that they should have only had two children. My niece-in-law finally asked him one day which of the four kids would he suggest they give back.

My nephew’s wife also confessed to me that she know’s her in-laws think their son “married down”. I have known this all along, but feigned ignorance. She doesn’t come from a wealthy family, but she’s intelligent, loving and knows she was lucky enough to find her soul mate. She has all the things that really matter, but that’s not good enough. It doesn’t make me happy that I’m not the only one to be treated this way.

She told me visiting their home on the east coast is torture. Everything is perfect and the kids are expected to stay in the basement where they can’t damage anything. When they come up for a meal they are not allowed to leave the table. She has vowed to never go again for an extended visit.

That last trip to the east coast was financially crippling to this struggling family to buy airfare to get all six of them out there. Then my nephew accidentally put a small scratch on his parents SUV when he was pulling it in the garage. They were informed that my brother and his wife simply could not drive it that way and my nephew had to give them a check for $1,000.00 before leaving to pay for the repair. Money my nephew clearly could not afford.

My take on the situation

I could go on with more stories, but I think these are enough. My brother has totally and completely turned into my malignant narcissist mother complete with hypochondria, dellusions of perfection, and cruelty.

As I made the hour drive back to my own home that afternoon I shook my head in wonder and said a big thank you to my mother.

While I don’t minimize the pain and difficulty of being the scapegoat to a narcissistic mother, I am now, while still damaged, a loving, caring, and accepting person. Meanwhile the golden child has morphed into a full blown copy of the monster who created him.

Thank you mom for choosing your oldest son to be the golden child and making your little girl the scapegoat.

In the same conversation as the parody of Dorothy I mentioned that it would never have worked having my mother move in so I could care for her. I jokingly said if we were both under the same roof, one of us would have had to die.

I told him my mother had come to stay with me after I lost my only child. The few days she was here she said things that were so heinously cruel that at one point I actually contemplated throwing her off the second floor deck. I told her to go home.

One would think that after a lifetime of belittling, demeaning potshot at her daughter that even a narcissist wouldn’t be cruel enough to kick a grieving mother when she was down. Oh no, even then I was fair game.

This was after my brother and his family had flown into town for the funeral and he had made it perfectly clear that he felt my son deserved what had happened to him. He was so blatant in his dismissal of Gabe’s death that a friend had pulled me aside to tell me “Your brother is a complete asshole.” No kidding – he had a lifetime of training from my mother.

Gabe had wanted to be cremated and I felt the need to be there when he was transported to the crematorium. I wanted to make sure he had the things I wished with him – a book we were both reading The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck and a small flower arrangement from me. It was the last thing I could ever do for him, so I went and basically tucked him in for the last time and followed the van to the crematorium. I watched the casket get wheeled in and then drove home knowing I would never be able to do another thing for my beloved child ever again. I was beyond devastated.

I dragged myself into the house and found my mother at the kitchen table. I plopped down in a chair completely spent. I had nothing left.

My mother looked at me and smugly said “Dick (my brother) and I have always talked that you and Gabe were too close.”

My brain exploded on multiple levels.

They talked about us? When Dick treated us like complete crap, couldn’t stand to be around us and knew nothing of our lives, he dared to talk about us?

Too close? How the hell can a mother and child be too close? Oh, sorry – we loved, respected, and absolutely trusted the loyalty of the other. Silly me – I thought that’s the way things are supposed to be.

And the timing. I was without question at the lowest point I would ever be in my life and my mother couldn’t resist the opportunity to stick a knife in and twist it. Or as the image shows, give me a helpful push off the cliff.

I slammed out the back door to stand on the second floor deck in a rage over the fact my mother’s cruelty evidently had no limits. When I realized I was thinking how much I’d like to grab her frail little body and throw it over the rail, I decided it was time for her to go.

I went in and told her I needed to be alone and asked her to go home. She couldn’t believe it. Why did I want her to go? She thought she should stay a week or two. She wanted to “be” there for me. If she stayed a week or two one of us would end up dead and I wasn’t sure whether it would be homicide or suicide. She had to go.

I couldn’t get her out of the house fast enough. Losing a child is beyond bad. Having a narcissistic family who uses it as an opportunity to inflict more pain is incomprehensible.

So to my friend who made the “She was only trying to help” comment when I told him about throwing my mother out after my son’s death – be careful about making judgments when you know nothing of which you’re talking. It kind of smacked of “We always thought you were too close…”

 

 

The Parable of Dorothy ImageA friend and I were talking about people we knew who were caring for aging parents, who had pretty much given up their lives in that endeavor.

I shared with him how my mother had spent my entire life trying to indoctrinate me as to how things would be when she got older by telling me a story about a childhood friend of hers.

The friend’s name was Dorothy and she never married. Her father fell ill and was too much for her mother to care for so Dorothy moved back home with them and cared for her father for several years until he finally died. All Dorothy did was work and care for her parents.

Not long after her father’s death her mother fell ill and again Dorothy spend several years caring for her failing mother until her eventual death. All Dorothy did was work and care for her mother.

All through the telling of this story my mother would be going in absolute raptures over what a wonderful person Dorothy was. How glorious it was that she willingly sacrifice her entire life to the care of her parents.

I, on the other hand, from childhood on would silently listen in horror since I was fully aware that this parable’s purpose was to instruct me on what my future would be.

The horrific end to Dorothy’s story is that when she was finally free to live her life, when the burden of caring for both her parents was finally removed, she was diagnosed with cancer and rapidly declined and died herself.

Without even going into what psychologically must have been going on with Dorothy the very same story that enchanted my mother with it’s goodness seemed to me a nightmarish tale of a life lost. Dorothy was essentially dead many, many years prior to her actual passing.

This story was told to me time and again throughout my childhood and adulthood. My mother didn’t want me to forget the role she wanted me to play. And I listened to it over and over.

Until I was around 40 years old when I started fighting back against my mother’s narcissistic behavior. My mother and I were at dinner at a restaurant when she launched into another telling of the Dorothy tale and I blew up. Despite being in public I told her in a loud, clear voice “That’s a horrible story. Dorothy gave up her entire life and when she had a chance to finally live she died herself. DO NOT EVER TELL ME THAT HORRIBLE STORY AGAIN!”

She didn’t. Perhaps mom had a clue at that point that I was not inclined to follow in Dorothy’s footsteps. I never verbalized it but had decided that mom had made a choice. She used, abuse, and took advantage of me for the first 40 years of my life. Her choice. I wasn’t going to let her do it for the last 40 years of my life.

In my opinion she picked the wrong half of my life to have me wait on her hand and foot. But then I doubt she ever conceived the idea that I might one day put my foot down and say “no more”. And that day would be when she was 70 years old and closing in on the time she really would need help only to find she had burned out her chances a long time ago.

When I am troubled I tend to do a lot of reading in hope of finding an answer that might soothe my troubled heart. After I lost my son, and I mean several months after because I wasn’t capable of comprehending anything for the first few months, I started buying and reading books on grieving and loss.

While some had words of comfort I found one that deeply resonated with me and gave me ideas to help cope  — it was When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner. I purchased it in September and my son had died the previous November so I had already had ten months to mull over my situation. Kushner’s book gave me two incredibly valuable things.

The Randomness of Life

The first I hesitate to tell people because many find it terribly depressing, when for me it has the opposite effect. I accepted the utter randomness of life. Just because you have something one moment, there is no guarantee you will have it the next.

One of the things that helped me survive losing my only child was that there was nothing left unsaid between us. I didn’t have moments of “If I had only told him this” or “If I had only told him that” because we were open with each other in love, respect, and loyalty even when we were in the midst of heated disagreements.

So once I accepted the randomness of life it prompted me to not leave good things unsaid in more aspects of my life. If someone is nice to me I tell them how much I appreciate it. If I really like someone, I let them know it. That way if for some reason I never get to speak to them again I will have left nothing unsaid that I might later regret.

Celebrate Instead of Grieve

The first of anniversary of Gabe’s death was looming as I read the book and it gave me another huge gift. I knew what I wanted to do on the anniversary day and I knew that Gabe would love the idea. I contacted all the people who had helped me and supported me during the months since his death and told them I was having an open house that night. I would supply wine and appetizers if they would supply their presence.

It was a wonderful evening as my attorney, counselor, and friends met and talked for the first time and obviously liked each other. We never got out of the kitchen as we all stood around the island and sipped our wine and munched on food while visiting. When I closed the door behind the last person who left I glowed with the knowledge of doing the absolute right thing. It had been a celebration of caring and friendship and I knew Gabe had been right there with us.

For anyone who has had an unexpected event flatten them, this book is definitely worth a try.

 

I’ve had occasion recently to reexamine my thoughts about rock bottoms, because I suspect I’m heading toward one myself.

Not just for addicts

It seems a lot of people think rock bottom is a concept that only comes into play for alcoholics and addicts when they hit their proverbial rock bottom and their situation is so bad they are open to getting help – like it’s a magic window of opportunity.

I believe this to be true, but I will argue till the cows come home that rock bottom happens in all aspects of life, not just in addiction.

I think hitting rock bottom in any situation is often the impetus for change. Your significant other cheats on you one too many times, your abusive boss upsets the hell out of you for the last time, you aren’t able to pay your credit card because you’ve gone on another shopping spree. You hit the point where things are so bad you can’t stand it any more, so you get your butt in gear and start figuring out how to dig yourself out of the hole.

Big ones and little ones

I view rock bottoms as the low spots between beautiful scenic mountains – really low spots. Sometimes we roll down the mountainside so slowly that we don’t realize we rolled right down to a rock bottom. Sometimes we go over a cliff and go splat all over the rocks.

I know what splats are like. My splats were growing up with a narcissistic mother and losing my only child. They are the rock bottoms that are so bad it takes a while to recover enough to begin our long, slow crawl out of them.

The slow rolls are more gradual, have warning signs, and don’t hurt as much when we hit, but can be almost as hard to climb back out of.

Approaching one of moderate size

Right now I haven’t quite settled at the bottom, kind of like a marble you roll down the side of a bowl. It rolls to the bottom and starts to roll up the other side only to lose momentum and roll back to the bottom and back up in the wrong direction, only to repeat itself over and over again. There are good days and bad with no real decided direction.

I’ve been really bad about relationships since I lost my son and have finally reached a level of isolation that I find untenable. So after sitting on my butt and doing nothing about it and allowing it to get worse and worse I am unhappy enough to do something. At least I hope I am. Like I said — the marble keeps rolling back and forth. And I know it has to start with baby steps.

Recovery

Non-addiction rock bottoms share another attribute with addictive ones, or maybe all rock bottoms result from our inability to let go of something we know full well isn’t good for us. In that sense, maybe all problems are about some level of addiction, but some of us focus on legal and less life destroying ones.

I know from personal experience the really bad rock bottoms left me in a period of recovery where I had to remain ever vigilant to not slide back down into the bottom from either internal or external forces. When I finally shook off the training by my narcissist mother she was none too happy with the change and worked until the day she died to try to change me back to the person she wanted me to be. I had to be ever vigilant for her attacks and still was blind-sided on occasion.

When I started crawling out of the abyss after losing my son I had to make myself get out and do things, because in my heart I wanted to figuratively (and maybe literally) stay in bed with the covers pulled over my head. Maybe I wasn’t vigilant enough on that one and that why I have now slid back down to the bottom and need to get myself out again.

Rock bottoms, the “splat on the rocks” variety, really are the abyss. No matter what the cause, there is grieving and mourning and no one can know or understand the pain you’re in. Counselors can help — but no one knows the pain.  The journey out of the abyss is one you have to make alone and you won’t do it until you’re good and ready. And it’s really, really hard work — maybe the hardest work you will ever do in your life. I, again, am speaking from experience.

I need to get myself ready — or maybe life is doing that for me. As long as you’re still breathing there is always hope.

 

 

This is a shameless plug for a charity I believe in. If you haven’t heard of Project Linus nothing explains it better than their mission statement:

Project Linus is a non-profit organization with a two-fold mission.

First, it is our mission to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need through the gifts of new, handmade blankets and afghans, lovingly created by volunteer “blanketeers.”

Second, it is our mission to provide a rewarding and fun service opportunity for interested individuals and groups in local communities, for the benefit of children.

I recently found out about PL and have joined the Dallas area group. What I have found is a group of loving, generous, fun women who get together for an incredibly good cause. If you sew, quilt, knit, crochet, or even make no-sew fleece blankets this is a wonderful cause to get involved in.

Be sure to read the blanket guidelines or drop by at least one meeting. They get blankets that have to be reworked and I know if would make the donors very sad if they knew this was required. So find out what they need — especially for the no-sew blankets.

When you get involved you make warm fuzzies in two ways — the blankets that go to the kids and the feelings you have about the project you complete 🙂

As a mom who has lost her only child Project Linus offers something special to me. I can’t make things for my son and I’m not going to have grandchildren to make things for so I make blankets for little children who are seriously ill, maybe taken away from their parents, or in some other bad circumstance. It’s a great feeling. And the feeling of community with the other wonderful members isn’t too shabby either.