Memorial Day 2003

Of all the things I wanted to be when I grew up, an inspiration was never one of them.  And yet, somehow, that is precisely what I have become.  To some people.

It has been my brief experience that when people see you as an inspiration, they have a tendency to somehow put you above themselves.  And, honestly, I am not comfortable with that.

There are also times I wonder, What have I inspired people to do?

Inspiration without action is a dream that dies at the dawn of day.

When people read my words–maybe Katrina & Me, When Lightning Strikes, Any Port In A Storm, A Dark & Stormy Night, or Whatever–they usually just see the end result.  They don’t see the dark days and the never-ending nights, the times I shook my fist at God in a maddening rage of grief.  (Those of you who are regular readers may recall my mentioning that the word “anger” originates from Old Norse; it literally means “to grieve.”)  And I have, at times, gotten the impression from people that because I have endured my share of storms and have lived to see the sunrise, people somehow think that I don’t need help.  That I’ve “got it together.”

Well, I don’t.  And I won’t.  Not this side of eternity.  But if people think you are some sort of inspiration, it can be difficult for you to find someone to talk to about what really is wrong.  Simply because it is difficult for them to see you as vulnerable.  And while everyone knows the old saying, “Nobody’s perfect,” there is still a difference between knowing and learning.

For instance, I know that energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared, but I don’t have a clue what all of that means.  In the same way, the people in my life may know that I am not perfect, but they have certainly not yet learned the ways in which I am flawed.

For who has eyes to see?

The Earth has seasons.  And so do we.  Even now, as The Northeast of America approaches The Summer Solstice, the days are warm and the nights are cool.  But soon, the nights will be warm and the days will be hot. In the same way, there are days I can throw a thunderbolt in faith, but there are also times the storms drive me to the shallow shelter of tempation.

It’s too much.  And I give in.

Truth be told, I never wanted to be inspiration.  And I’ll tell you why.

Because I still remember that morning, years ago, when my brother laughed so hard he spit up his Cheerios.

I still remember when he took my favorite spot in front of the TV during Saturday morning cartoons after I had got up to make some toast and to get him to move I put peanut butter in his hair.

And the time he would open and close the ashtray in Mom’s car while saying, “I am KITT.  The talking car!”

Or when we stayed up all night watching cable TV and one character had to blow something up to save the world so she got a gasoline can and I said, for no particular reason, “Hey, that’s gas.”  And my brother said, I mean he just shouted, “DUUUUUHH!”

And I still remember the time we were playing on the jungle gym and he saw a sign in the distance that read DRUGS and he just said, in a funny, dunce-like voice, “Drugs!  Oh, wow!  We gotta go there, Martha!”

I still remember the German word for “cleaning woman” because it always sent Steve Martin’s character on a rampage in the comedy Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and my brother could imitate it perfectly.

And I remember when he asked me, years later, to be the godfather of his firstborn.

And how crushed I was when he went back to prison again and lost that child to the state because the pull of alcoholism and drug addiction brought out the worst in him.  And he would beat his wife.

The last time I visited him in prison, he said things to deliberately set me off–brothers always know how to get to brothers–and for him provocation meant gratification, but I just handed the phone to Dad.  And I never visited him in prison again.

When he went back to prison–again–he sent me a letter.  I sent it back.  Unopened.  Because after my grandfather had passed away, my brother promised to move to Florida to help my grandmother.  But when he came back to The Northeast to finalize his divorce, it was drinking and drugs all over again. He broke his promised to our eighty-year-old widowed grandmother, who is still the greatest woman I have ever known.

And, one day, he got high on crack just before meeting my (then) seventeen-year-old niece.  And he wanted her to lift up her shirt in front of a stranger so he could get money.  My niece hasn’t spoken to him since.  I got so mad I…Well, you can imagine what I wanted to do.

Truth be told, I just miss my brother.  I miss the personal jokes.  The laughter that made my stomach hurt. Brought tears of joy to my eyes. But, last I knew, he had another son–possibly a third on the way–but the adoptions for the first two have been finalized.  And my brother is still an alcoholic and a crack addict who now collects welfare and lives in subsidized housing.  Somewhere.

I haven’t spoken to him in five years.

Five years ago today.

Memorial Day.

How many mourn the living?

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And God has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1st John 4:20-1).

People have said that I am an inspiration, but there are times I wonder, Am I the liar?

Because there are days I really do hate my brother.

And yet, there are other times, in the storm of my despair and the tempest of my brother’s addictions, that I trust in the sunrise of God’s grace and forgiveness.

And every Sunday, when the worship leader at my church says, “We now pray, either out loud or in our hearts, for those who need You…” I whisper his name.

And that whisper is all I have left.

It is all my faith can manage.

I have been praying for him for years.  Years.  And for years I have watched as his whole life has descended into the darkness of drinking and drug addiction.  And betrayal.  Sometimes, it is so much more than I can bear.  A secret of which I seldom speak.

Don’t tell me this storm is an inspiration.  I don’t want to hear it.

Because the sunrise, this time, is a long night off.

And you know something?

It always is.

{New on Podcast Page:  ”Katrina & Me.”}