addiction and boxing gloves.

I don't want to humiliate my brother.  He's one of the most influential people in my life.  Some people think influence has to be someone you look up to but I think it's just someone you learn from.  

My brother has hurt a lot of people in his life and it goes far beyond lying and stealing from people.  I could have done without his acid-induced late nights when my mom had chemotherapy to wake up to the next morning.  I could have gone without the guilt of not bailing him out when when his warm bed depended on it.  I could have done without the dizzying manipulation that sends me questioning everyone's stories.  I could have done without witnessing him taking advantage of my dad's disabilities as the spit from his abusive words sprayed my dad's face while my dad, unable to move because of paralysis, took it like a military Private takes demands from his Commander.   

My first recollection of my brother's disease is all too terrible.  If I told you every detail, you'd think he's a monster which is far from who he is.  My first recollection is my worst recollection.  Than he went to treatment, relapsed, went to treatment again, relapsed, was kicked out, came home, went to treatment and relapsed again.  The cycle is vicious and all consuming.  There were tables broken, doors replaced, picture frames shattered, words that seem unspeakable to most were spoken by both parties (my brother and us: his family) and my own dad was even pushed down the stairs.  Okay, I said it, my first recollection of the affliction of my brother's addiction was when he pushed my dad down a flight of stairs.  My mom screamed, I ran to my neighbors safe haven behind me and Travis was taken by ambulance and straight jacket to the hospital.  I don't know what he was on that day and it doesn't really matter anyway.  What I would really like to do without though, is the memory of him telling my mom that the next time he would see her is at her funeral in two weeks.  And when I screamed at him in a desperate attempt to make him swallow back the words he spoke and just walk out of the room before those hurtful things came out again, he said to me, "You can rot in hell with her."  He lives with the memories that I live with, except our parents are gone and he has no one to apologize to for those terrible words.  

Later his addiction would send him into a depression so deep that he attempted suicide at 15 and if it wasn't for his ex-girlfriend performing CPR, he would be a distant memory to me.  I can't understand the misery someone has to go through to want to die.  And I also can't begin to understand the misery of feeling bound and tied by an addiction so fierce that it ruins your entire life.  

This go at treatment will be my brother's 10th attempt but if you ask him he will say, "It's my 9th because the first one didn't really count because I kissed a girl and got kicked out within the first 12 hours."  If you look at his track record, I can now understand why some people just can't hold onto the faith.  

But I have a different view.  

Before I understood what addiction was, I would scream at him at all hours of the night alongside my mom and ask him to stop doing drugs.  After my mom was dead, I screamed at him from my front door when he asked to come in.  I refused to let him into my house in the condition he was in and asked him to leave.  He refuted and told me to stop telling people he was on meth.  I said, "Fine.  If you want me to stop telling people than stop doing it" and I slammed the door in his face only to open it back up again and scream nonsense to his back as he walked away.  It felt so good to slam that door in his face.  

Now you see, dear reader, I'm not posting this to defend my brother because I have the same anger towards him that you must feel reading this.  Only now, I understand that I am a non-addict and not drinking is as easy as pouring myself a glass of orange juice.  All I do is think of waking up with a hang-over and I choose to read a book instead but my brother has that disease that I'm talking about.  That one that when he says "no," his body says "yes."  And when his body tells him what it needs, our natural instinct is to give it what it needs.  I have watched how easy it is for my brother to pour highball after highball of pure whiskey but I have never experienced how hard it is to say "no" when the better part of you is craving it.  

My brother never asked to be an addict.  I know, some of you might wholeheartedly disagree that the life we choose is just that: the life we choose.  I disagree in some respects.  Except here is what I know: my brother was born with a disease that affects his brain.  He never wanted it and never asked for it.  I don't think anyone wishes to lose their family, their home, their credit, their future and take multiple people along with him.  Even his choices to lie about where he is, what he is on, how sober he is or who he is with are all influenced by that deep and dark disease.  He has lost something really good in his life - multiple times - and when non-addicts lose really good things, they learn how to grieve and move on but Travis has a trusty friend that he can turn to that makes his world beautiful because he can get through the day with his memories, his abuse, his demons.  

Now, if I just chalked all of Travis' (here's that word again) fuck ups to his addiction, than he'd be a saint like anyone else.  I am not handing Travis the "addiction card" and telling him it's his scapegoat.  I am acknowledging right here and now that  he has a responsibility to himself, to his children and to his family to get healthy and stop the abuse and manipulation.  

When someone has cancer, they most likely get treatment for it because their lives depend on it.  When someone has addiction, they're less likely to get treatment even when their lives depend on it.  Travis will die if he doesn't make it through this treatment.  His addiction is beyond what is "right" and "wrong" or how many people he has hurt along the way.  His addiction is even beyond his own children.  Addiction doesn't give a shit if you have children.  It doesn't care what kind of business you have built, it doesn't care how many grandchildren you have, it doesn't care that your parents are dead and you owe it to your surviving siblings and children to get clean, it doesn't care that you have a car to drive home tonight or if your wife is sitting at home waiting for you to safely pull in the driveway in that very car.  When the addiction calls, the addict answers.  Travis' addiction has always been life-threatening but now it's asking him to step into the shadows of a better life beyond this one.  Whether Travis has the strength to see through this is in his hands.  He has taken this step 10 times.  His addiction has proved stronger than him every time.  I can't bear the thought of this addiction winning.  I hope he strapped those gloves tight because this is going to be a bitter fight.  

Facebook and a Mead notebook.

My mom never knew what facebook was.  She never even knew something of this nature would exist.  She never knew it could exist.  Silly of me to write about this or care about this, I know.  But let me explain, please.  There was once a time, not so long ago, that people lived without electricity.  Babies wore cloth diapers.  Cars didn't run manually and neither did cameras.  This present time, this time of facebook and a black President, is a time that my mom isn't a part of.  She is no longer part of any generation that says, "There was a time when facebook didn't exist..." and proceed to tell stories of playing outside for social interaction.

I understand that life goes on.  Buildings that once housed her first job (Poppin Fresh which transformed into Bakers Square nestled next to a train track in St. Anthony) are being torn down and new development is cropping up everywhere.  Her favorite strip of wide open land is home to Medtronic.  Her wig store has been demolished, Target has upgraded, Ground Round is dust and so is our favorite Snyder's drugstore.  Herberger's has been replaced with a Walmart and a Chipotle but she wouldn't know that restaurant anyway. It came after "her time."

All these trivial things of businesses slowing, closing and renewing and what do they have to do with me or the death of my mom?  Well, nothing, really.  Life goes on.  Life slows, closes and renews everyday.  The day my mom died I watched an old woman in an outdated white Olds-mobile laugh with her white haired passenger.  I was at a stoplight and I watched them smile at each other, sharing stories.  The memory plays like a slow motion reel in my head as I watched her arthritic hand reach for the top of the steering wheel and turn her head downward in a fit of hilarity.  Those two white haired women had no idea that I was wishing, despite their beautiful smiles, that one of their long years could have been replaced with my mom's short years.  I felt envious of the life they were breathing because just 44 minutes before, the breath of my mom's life stopped.

After my encounter with age at that fateful red stoplight, I felt that stop lights needed to be red all day, week, month even, until I was properly grieved for and had accounted for all the aches of missing the beat to my heart.  But clocks still ticked, registered still beeped, hair still grayed, shoes still tied, laughs still echoed and people just like me were saying good-bye to someone they loved.  Life didn't stop for them and wouldn't stop for me.

Some days though, I can't swallow that my mom will never know facebook, Chipotle, my degree or my daughter.  Those are things of the present, something that she isn't.  My mom (gulp) is a person of the past...like Abraham Lincoln or Mother Teresa.  She doesn't exist but in my memories.  Her body and mind has seen and lived the years between 1955-2002 and everything before that is what it is now.  Gone.

I had one day short of sixteen years with my mom.  As anyone likely knows, at 16 there is not much going on in the world outside of oneself and let me let you in on something: it doesn't matter if your mom is dying or not.  I didn't have curiosity or interest in my mom's life outside of being my mom.  Her family history, previous boyfriends, friendship squabbles, martial issues, pregnancy, child births or cancer diagnosis came invisible to me in her package as "mom."  I was robbed of any of those stories.  

Luckily, for me, I have her journals.  She bought a green Mead notebook for $0.39 sometime in the summer of 1976.  She questioned whether my dad was the right one, graduated from college, said no to four of my dad's proposals, finally said "yes," welcomed Travis, endured my dad walking out on them, welcomed him back and conceived and gave birth to Taylor all in one notebook.  One of her first entries she describes how she is sitting alone at school in her final year at the University of Minnesota and is looking out the window at the Washington Ave. bridge.  She's quiet and contemplative.  My brothers, nor myself, are even a thought inside of her.  Fast forward just seventeen years later and she has Stage III metastasizing ovarian cancer.  She never saw it coming.  Her plans didn't include this.

When I first discovered her notebook she was already gone.  I sat on the floor where her hospital bed was, the one she died on in her bedroom, and opened up her past to read the words of a woman full of hope and promise and beauty.  I read each page in her empty bedroom that she died in, knowing in just four short days the place she made home would be someone else's.  I cried heavy in that spot on the floor because I wanted her back.  I plain and simple ached for her.  I laid down on the floor, directly below where she would have been laid in her hospital bed and tried to imagine saying goodbye to my future children and I cried even harder for her.  Her plans didn't include this.

Forty seven years and she was able to change my 16 year old self for a lifetime.  Her plans probably didn't include this either.