Ok, well so it wasn’t 99 bottles but it was damn near close. The year is 2012 and the month is January. I had been noticing that my brother was becoming more and more sloppy looking, extremely distant from us and at some points very belligerent. So, I decided that I was going to be a snoopy-snoop and look in his closet. When I did I gasped at the all of the drained French Imported Brandy bottles that he had collected. They were lined all along the top of his closet shelf and the floor and some just strewn about. When I stepped back and really looked at his room I realized how much of a lack of care had come over him .

I decided that I was going to start saying you have to quit drinking to him directly versus indirectly (we all know what I mean here people!) so I did and I was immediately rebuked by him. I knew nothing, I had no authority over him.

He was not nice about it and he threw all my families imperfections back at me and told me NO, you don’t understand.. blah blah..

I pleaded with him to help me to understand. He would not and turned back to watching his 30-year-old TV shows of I Dream of Jeannie, MASH and Archie Bunker just to name a few.

I also asked my good friend Rich to help me. He had become my brothers friend also and he tried a little to talk to my brother but my brother liked him because he could talk to him and not be judged about anything. Hence, that was not going to be a venue that would help him stop.

One evening in mid-January I had come in late and I came across my brother coming out of the bathroom. I had noticed that he had left an envelope to be mailed to a guy who worked at the pizza shop by the ice skating rink (the place he would go to hangout, buy nip bottles for the workers and on the sly drink his own alcohol) and I questioned him – Why are you mailing something to Derek when you see him everyday?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BIG MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He rushed towards me in my room startling me. He grabbed my glasses off my face, threw them to the floor, took my head in his hands squeezing it while saying “you and Mom are driving me fucking crazy”. I was scared it was 12:30AM he was yelling at me. I was afraid of him and I wanted him out of my room. I wanted to lock the door. I started to say I know, I know, I am sorry it wont happen again.. I put my hands out in a pleading manner and he grabbed them and bent them back wards so that I would have to go down to my knees. I begged him saying I was sorry. He let me go and then he unsteadily picked up my glasses… and turned away from me towards my bedroom door.

I HONESTLY THOUGHT HERE THAT HE WAS GOING TO SNAP MY GLASSES IN TWO

but he did not and he turned around and gave them to me and left.

Whoever that was just then it was not my brother.

My Brother wasnt that person. Where was he? What happened to him?

I was white with anger and shaking in both fear and rage but I just didn’t get what had happened. I went to go and ask him if he was ok and he was sitting in his chair doing that rocking thing and he was holding this little white knife that my Father had gotten from HIS Father and given to my brother. He was opening and closing the knife and he looked at me with this look I never want to see again but one that I will never forget.

I said ok.. I am leaving .. and I went back to my room and for the first time in forever I locked my bedroom door to go to sleep.

As you could expect, I did not get too much sleep. I was too ramped up from the violent reaction that I had experienced and wanted to talk to someone about it but I was both ashamed of my brother’s actions and worried that maybe I was driving him crazy and that I was a nag and that I deserved what had just happened.

That night I did two things

1) I Prayed to God that he would intervene with my brother’s drinking problem if I could not help him. I prayed every prayer I could and even made up one. and then..

2) I lamented the loss of my Brother that night as I felt as almost he was dead to me in acting the way he did. No, perhaps that is the wrong way of stating what I felt. At that moment after praying to God to help him… I lost all remaining respect for my brother. That is exactly what happened.

So you know I did tell my Mom and other Brother exactly what happened … we did not have any good answers to solving the problem. it was clear that my brother was not going to listen to the collective US… He knew better and was better than all of us.

We continued living in the same house and we did not speak a peep to each other. He never apologized and we would not speak civilly to each other until late April. But we didn’t speak like we had years before.. We were in all sense of the words. Polite strangers.

He did express remorse to my friend Rich over it but he still had a delusional thought pattern about me and my Mom on how we were not good enough to help him – no wait we did not have the AUTHORITY to help him. In fact, many a time I would overhear him on the phone telling people that he had Authority over ME!

I know I mentioned to you that he was mentally ill and this also manifested itself in his over the top views on religion and how he thought he was some sort of prophet with magical powers and he could heal people with his hands and waving over them. Many a time, to get him to go away.. I would say I felt something when he prayed and waved over me.. I suppose I should have said the truth and said NO you moron I feel NOTHING .. but I know that he would have kept waving his hands and getting upset that I didn’t feel anything so it was definitely better to say I had.

I would have to say that from April to the beginning of August I didn’t talk to my brother much. I knew that he would be celebrating his birthday at the end of the month and that he was going to be turning 50. I noticed that he had more and more bottles and that he had also enlisted Rich in the removal and disposal of the evidence of his problem.

I did again attempt to say to my brother you need to get help, I will go with you to the Dr’s or ANYWHERE.. but it fell on deaf ears.

His birthday came, I called him and sang him Happy Birthday (family tradition) and he hung up on me….

I kept praying for an intervention.. .. ..