free bird

My brother, who we call "Boyou" because my dad called him that, is 51 years old. He is an alcoholic and probably has been since he was about 13 or 14. I can't remember the last time he was sober or when I last talked to him when he wasn't drunk. This picture taken when he was a little boy might be the only picture I have of him sober. He actually was forced into sobriety for three days last week because he spent them in jail. I am not convinced that he didn't con the jailers into bringing him in some beer. I won't go into detail about why he was in jail but it was a second offense and we are hoping he will get 90 days there. Maybe 90 days is a good start.

He has a way about him of being able to convince most anyone to do anything for him. Maybe it is part of the disease, I don't know. There's a lot of things I don't know about him. He and I were always close - kind of on the same wave length. He would always try not to cry by opening his eyes really wide when we watched the Wizard of Oz every spring when we were kids. He was the one who insisted on seeing me in the emergency room when I was severely burned at my high school graduation party. I can still see him standing there with tears in his eyes, saying to the crabby old night nurse who has long since died "She is my sister and I am going in there". Of course he was drunk even then. I can remember smelling the beer on his breath when he hugged me. Boyou lost his best friend when he was in his early thirties. He too was an alcoholic and a diabetic...not a good combination. Glen was his name. He had one leg amputated because of the diabetes. He used to sit in the bar and take out his pocket knife and slam it into his wooden leg. Of course, those who didn't know him were horrified.
Now sometimes I am afraid of and for my brother. I remember once we were walking by an old mine shaft back in my little hometown. It had a fence around it but was an open pit. I had a weird feeling that he was going to push me in. He has never hurt me but the drinking sometimes turns him mean and he tries to hurt everyone who loves him the most. Sometimes he tells me he hates me and accuses me of telling him how to run his life even though I only see him once or twice a year. I just tell him I love him. It is all I can do.

I don't know why my brother is an alcoholic - could be heredity as we come from a long line of alcoholics. I figure it is some pain he can't face sober that none of us know about. Maybe he never felt he measured up. Often at work I see people who I imagine could be my brother -an orthopedic surgeon or an architect that has blue eyes and blond hair. I imagine what his life would be like if he had not taken the path he has taken. "Life's a movie". he says. "You have your movie and this is mine". I know I have lost him. He has early signs of liver disease - large belly and bad color. His teeth are falling out. He can't care about anyone or anything anymore other than where he will get his next beer. He has no energy. Once upon a time when I visited back home, he would run the 7 miles to the next town with me. He has run several marathons. I always dreamed of running another one with him. Only now he can't even do much manual labor - he gets too tired. He stays with my mom but can't sit still and people in the small town enable him more than we do. It was the owner of the one bar in town who bailed him out of jail. My mom worries about him but treats him like a kid. We can't talk about him to her because it upsets her. He is still her baby and he may be slowly killing her too.

I got my hopes up when he quit smoking. Turns out he had an infection "down there" - maybe epididymitis or something. He said God told him to quit smoking. Too bad God doesn't tell him to quit drinking.

I am usually the optimist but I think we have lost him to this disease and to his movie. I tell him if life is a movie he should fire his director. He looks at me with those lost eyes and sings his favorite song by Leonard Skynard:

If I leave here tomorrow

Would you still remember me?

For I must be traveling on now

Cause there's too many places I've got to see

But if I stayed here with you girl

Things just couldn't be the same.

Cause I'm as free as a bird now

And this bird will never change.