My Brother's Keeper

I was 5 years old the summer he was born. My father joked about how he must have been the mailman's, he certainly hadn't been planned. We were the youngest of eight.

They asked me if I wanted to go to kindergarten or stay home and help Mama look after the new baby. My sister had already taught me to read and write, so school would likely just be a waste of time anyway. So I stayed home that year.

Mama had been unpredictable for a very long time. I suppose that's what happens when your husband works away from home in logging camps, leaving you to tend to two girls and five rambunctious boys in a house that is less than a thousand square feet.

She'd placed impossible expectations on herself, wanting desperately to be looked up to by other members of her church. Our home, although far too small for all those children, was always spotless. She'd even make us fluff our footprints out of the shag carpet in the living room.

We sat together as a family and read our Bibles at the start of every day. She'd broken it down to know exactly how many pages needed to be read each day to get through the entire book in a year. Every year we read it cover to cover.

We attended religious meetings three days a week. She wanted us all to be perfectly groomed and well-behaved when she presented us in public. We were supposed to sit perfectly still and quiet through all those hours-long sermons, but boys aren't very good at that... especially when they all have ADHD. Mind you, back in the seventies, that wasn't a thing, so my brothers were just 'bad'.

All that pressure had already proven too much for her. When she found out that she was pregnant yet again, she had a nervous breakdown. I think it may have been helped along by my two older brothers, then seven and nine years old being caught hanging out of their bedroom window sniffing modeling glue.

At any rate, I knew that she was going to need help looking after the baby. When they brought him home from the hospital I made my bed underneath his crib. Nobody had asked me to, I just knew that he would need me through the night and Mama needed rest.

He'd seemed a perfect baby, but I don't imagine that her afternoon blitzed on Zombies, nor the 'happy pills' she took during her pregnancy had done him very much good.

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

Now he's 44, he still needs me, and Mama still needs rest. She's 80 now, living in a nursing home, and devastated that only one of her 8 children is still with the religion. Since the rest of us have 'fallen from grace', we are dead to her.

Growing up, the older boys all looked upon him with disgust. He was spoiled and lazy. They'd all been pulled from school in their early teens and sent to work with Dad in the bush. There were a lot of hungry mouths to feed and they needed to pull their weight. He, on the other hand, had only spent part of one summer packing a chainsaw. He was too feeble to hack the long days of hard physical labor and just slowed production down. Besides, there weren't so many hungry mouths at home anymore.

Even though he didn't have to lift a finger to earn a dime, he got to enjoy all the latest and greatest of fads and toys. That was a privilege the rest of us had certainly never enjoyed. Some of the older kids were jealous of the pampering bestowed upon him.

Nobody could understand why someone who'd had it so good compared to the rest of us could fall into addiction. The older kids couldn't fathom that Mom and Dad were more than willing to pay for his rehab. We'd all been left to flounder on our own once we left home. When they had to pay for it the second time around, most of the boys were livid. They wrote him off as useless.

He did have a few good years after his second round in a residential addictions recovery program. He'd met a girl and gotten a job as an aid in a home for the disabled. The company he was working for offered to pay for him to get his nursing degree and he eagerly accepted. He did amazingly well in school.

His girlfriend got pregnant and their son was born on my birthday. He was so excited! I'm not sure what happened over those next few months that made things fall apart. I just know that by the beginning of December that same year his girlfriend had enough. She'd said that he was back on meth and she was not going to have that around her kids. He'd lost his job and was just being a stoned bum.

When I talked to him, he said that if he was going to be forced to miss his son's first Christmas he might just as well die. He couldn't even begin to fathom how he had come to this point.

She agreed to let him stay one more night, with my promise to come and get him the next day. He promised not kill himself, as long as he could be with some family for Christmas. Firm boundaries were set, no drugs and no self-harm while he was under my roof. He doesn't drive and I'm some 40 kilometers from the nearest town. He'd be hardpressed to get any drugs here.

He'd gotten through December and we got him set up with supports and an apartment. He had 30 days clean when we moved into town, appointments booked for outpatient treatment, and a list of 12 step meetings at his disposal. I was sure he'd be okay.

He was, for the first couple of months anyway. Then he decided to venture off to the bright lights of the big city. No plan in place, he just packed up some clothes and jumped on a bus. There was something on the streets that called to him. He thought it was adventure.

I lost track of him for a while. I almost half expected a phone call that he had died in some seedy back alley somewhere, maybe from an overdose or just from pissing off the wrong person.

Then, years later, I got a text. It was nearly Christmas. I had a houseful of company and it was forty below freezing, there were travel advisories and we are all hunkered down, on the farm. We had a warm, cozy house with plenty of good food and Christmas cheer.

'Sis, it's Mat. I'm dying.'

'What!?! What do you mean?'

'I'm freezing and I have nowhere to go.'

'Shelter?'

'Banned for getting stoned and making a scene. Please help me. I'm so fucking cold and hungry.'

I was two hours away. I have a family to consider. They need me, too. I couldn't just jump in my van and go get him. I managed to text him through the next few days. Directed him to seek warmth in subway stations, libraries... wherever he could get out of the weather for a while. I googled and queried on Facebook finding him free food.

We managed to get him into a residential program early in the New Year. It was two hours on the other side of the city. So once I could finally get away and knew I had a safe place to take him, I went and plucked him from the streets.

This program was more than just a drug rehab. It was intensive and all-encompassing. There were doctor's exams and psychiatric evaluations, followed by medication trials and he wouldn't be released until he was deemed stable.

Drug-induced schizo-affective disorder. He had fried his brain. They did manage to stabilize him and release him. He decided to stay close to the hospital that ran the program so that he'd have easier access to medical care when he needed it.

He had another good year or so before life threw him another curveball. The couple he'd been renting a room from had asked him to move. The husband had cancer and had opted for medically assisted suicide. They wanted the house to themselves for his last few weeks. He found a place that he thought was perfect and gave them all his money, only to discover it was a scam.

Once again, I came to his rescue. I drove halfway across the province and brought him home. I convinced him that it would be easier for me to help him if he found a place close by. He stayed on the farm for almost a month, then found a room to rent in town.

This past April one of our older brothers passed away. As is too often the case when a loved one dies, family dysfunction roared to the surface. Only my mother, two of my brothers, and my sister-in-law were welcome at the Celebration of Life. I sunk into a deep depression and am only now beginning to find my way out. My baby brother went off of his prescribed medications and relapsed and nobody even noticed.

He called me in September. Once again, he'd made a dumb mistake and was on the verge of homelessness. Like many in our province, he had accepted the federal government's Covid benefits, and months later they decided he wasn't entitled to it it. They kept his disability benefit as repayment. If he didn't pay his rent, he'd be back on the streets.

I paid his rent and got him groceries, with the promise that he'd pay me back. He didn't.

The other day he called and told me that he'd been scammed again. Someone had accessed his bank account and cleaned him out. In that moment, we had to have a very difficult conversation. I told him that I couldn't afford to keep bailing him out of his financial problems. It was obvious that he needed help managing his money.

We've drawn up Power of Attorney papers and talked to his benefits. worker. We've made a plan and all of the arrangements. I am now and forever, My Brother's Keeper. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for him to actually admit that he is mentally incompetent to be an adult. I know my heart is breaking to be taking responsibility for a man-child.

Hopefully, we can keep doing this in a way that he can maintain some shred of dignity and independence. He says he feels like a child. I told him that I'll do my best to treat him with respect. He says he knows it. I'm the only one that always has, no matter what... even in the times he didn't deserve it.

Everybody else sees a crazy, useless fuck-up. When I look at him I just see the scared little boy that wants desperately to be a man. His heart has been broken by the times he's let loved ones down and been let down. At least he knows that I will forever be his safe place to land. Everybody needs that.