Tagging Along: In Search of a Brother’s Love
I’ve always had a propensity for using sleep as an escape. Particularly when feeling emotionally taxed. So, when I clocked twelve solid hours of “zzz’s” on a recent Sunday, it came as no surprise: I’d just flown home following a wedding hosted by a childhood friend whose son was getting married; I was very touched to be invited as it constituted my first major social foray into my list of old “homies” in a very long time. The reception had been quite the affair, and mingling with so many buddies and catching up on one another’s lives proved delightful. How inevitable that once home, I would push off my shoes feeling physically and mentally spent.
Yet, the next morning, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, the truth hit me: My mood had slipped into a funk—a funk that wasn’t caused by the rigors of traveling. Instead, it was a sure “tell” that more emotions were at play on a deeper level. I studied myself in the mirror. I’d stayed close enough to those at the party to be invited, while on the other hand, my brother and I had been estranged for over ten years. What had happened to the deep bond we had once shared during childhood? asked the voice in my head that so often accompanied me like a good shadow—an internal arbiter, really—pointing out inconsistencies and my own unintended slips. Its purpose, I knew, was to challenge me to dig deeper, to gain perspective and insight.
My brother and I were only two years apart—and until the time of our split, we’d remained pals. He’d been the one who’d always watched out for me during our childhoods, which were filled with emotional strife. It wasn’t surprising that a special connection had developed between us. Also not surprising, once I had acknowledged to myself how much I missed my brother some years ago, was how sorrow played like a symphony written in the minor mode. As a small girl, I’d idolized him. I floated on air whenever he tapped me as his “tag along” on hunts for treasures through vacant lots and in alleys paved with bits of glass, those which reflected shiny worlds of light. Why had we drifted so far apart? I wondered now. What had happened to that special love and friendship we had shared?
Later, over breakfast, while I spooned blueberries into a bowl filled with cottage cheese, I was still preoccupied. I had tried, just a few months ago, to reconnect with him because he was approaching a milestone birthday. Hopeful that we might one day be able to repair our mysterious estrangement, I’d sent an assortment of fruit and chocolate to his home. Included was a one-line note that wished him a great day—no sentimentality or obvious bid for attention; no awareness that I might have been setting up a test—just a happy thought. Then, I waited.
My brother had never responded to any of the holiday notes I’d sent over the past decade, all of which inquired how he and his family were doing. On those occasions, I’d coolly brushed aside the rebuff. His loss, I’d rationalize, putting the snub behind me. However, this time was different. In part, the specter of the pandemic made it impossible to pretend that I didn’t care that he’d never reached back to me—not even once—in all these years that had passed.
Now, the realization that we’d lost so many opportunities to create new memories overwhelmed me. There were a host of them, I realized, and this time I was hurt. Perhaps even worse, our children’s connection with one another had evaporated. This chasm between two young adult cousins ran counter to the tight relationships that had formed in our own large and extended family of eight. The night that the basket was supposed to arrive at his home, I crossed my fingers and hoped for a miracle: rapprochement. Though it was unlikely that a reconciliation was on the horizon,, I still had hope for such an emotion.
When, ultimately, I heard nothing from Anthony, acute disappointment overwhelmed my day, despite consoling myself that there was nothing I could do about it, and, finally, nothing to be done on my part. He was who he was and I was who I was, I reasoned. I had to go with what he was drawing the lines around, even if I didn’t like it. That made me sad, and I’d steeled myself to forget that sadness the night before, but it was one which nevertheless had followed me around that morning as I got ready for the day.
I realized then that my question about my brother was actually a different one: What had happened to him? I contemplated with considerable anxiety. And, for the first time, I was speaking in the past tense when I referred to him—as if he had died. I stared out my study window and allowed a new emotion to join with my current feelings: Grief.
The duration of our rift had reached milestone status—just as had his birthday. A decade was a long time, and now my brother and I were no longer young. What the hell had happened to us?
Gazing out into the backyard, I recalled the explanation I’d tried so hard to accept only last year—one that I’d gleaned from an online research article: a chief reason for family ruptures, the authors reported, was caregiving for aging parents. As a clinical psychologist, I was intrigued to read that the article described this dynamic in a way I might have accepted, though it did not jibe neatly with my own break-up with my brother and our continuing estrangement. “Sibling A is left with all the care and Sibling B doesn’t do anything,” it suggested. “After that, Sibling A says, ‘I’m done with you.’” The essay postulated that when Sibling A shoulders all the burden—and with resentment—Sibling B just turns aside, usually in silence. This accounted for only some of my experience. In my mind, I was the caregiver, while B was the one who ran from my parents and their needs. Had I been resentful of his absence? Yes, indeed—though I hadn’t wanted to admit it at the time.
The piece seemed to simply touch down on the slippery surface of the issues surrounding our problems and conflicts about “minding the elders,” while also applying to me and my brother—as well as our relationship at that time and our future. After skimming the piece, I’d wondered for a minute whether these researchers had chosen to explore not just the what but also the why. Why do family caregivers behave the way they do? My mind began scanning the landscape of what I knew about the importance of considering the possible pay-off—or “secondary gain,” as we clinicians call it—that sometimes motivates a person’s willingness to bear a burden they otherwise might not carry.
Now I recalled how—as the primary caregiver for our parents until their back-to-back deaths—my alienation from my brother occurred shortly beforehand. Back then I had swallowed my resentment at being their nearly sole caretaker. He, along with all my other siblings, fell short on sharing the weight of shepherding our Mom and Dad through their final years. This abandonment enabled me to wrap myself in the mantle of super-daughter, the one who ministered, by herself, to their many needs with skill and élan. Hadn’t I taken pleasure in that?
Outwardly, my relationship with Anthony had nevertheless proceeded pleasantly, seemingly unaffected—with the exception of the way I had ignored any of his attempts to offer me “advice.”
Smugness became the tastier bone to gnaw. If anything should have surprised me—but which did not, somewhat inexplicably—was the true question from which I looked away. Why had this brother with an ability to read anyone, quite deftly at any time and in any place, never challenged me about my motivations for becoming a “Sister A”?
Several days later, while perched on my back stairs and taking in some sun with the Black-eyed Susans pushing up in the garden at my feet, my low spirits were still low. Ruefully, I admitted the story I’d clung to for so long—that my brother had abruptly and “without cause” stopped talking to me only weeks after we became adult “orphans”—was not the entire truth. This narrative carried with it no appreciation for the complexities of our situation.
We’d never addressed, for example, what it meant for us to lose both of our parents—nearly simultaneously. Or, perhaps worse, we had failed to understand what each of us had brought to the table when our parents’ health began to decline. What had been the pay-off for him in abdicating responsibility for their care? I wondered. And why hadn’t either of us just talked openly about why he’d stepped away from them and from me, as I’d stepped in?
And then there were the heated telephone calls that preceded our break—the details which I can no longer even recall—which had ended with my threat to go “radio silent” if our conversations could not be civil. My stubbornness in avoiding the meaning of all this resulted in a flurry of furious family emails that questioned why I had taken Mom out to lunch on a hot summer day, thus enabling her to fall from her wheelchair, an injury from which she’d never recovered. How dare he criticize me! I’d fumed, hurt that I had been accused by my brother of being negligent. But, ultimately, who had rejected whom? And why hadn’t either of us just picked up the phone instead of letting these painful episodes drive our relationship into the dirt?
These insights, much like catching sight of the slender stalks that bloomed nearby, took me by surprise: What did all those years as a working therapist teach you if not to dig deeper for the roots of your rift? blasted the voice in my mind. But a softer one accompanied it as well, and it acted as a counterpoint.
Its message would have resonated with anyone estranged from someone important. We all process our emotions differently, including our anger and our sorrow, and we don’t grieve on a timetable. And now I also see that it wasn’t wise for me to mourn both my brother—and my parents—all alone.
And as for the rest? I expect that the grief I am feeling will prompt more questions about our estrangement, ones that will be important to root through and come to understand. I will wonder aloud with my millennial daughter what it means to her that she has only one relative, among dozens of cousins and several uncles, with whom she has no connection. But will I race to sleep for twelve hours at a crack before seeking answers? Not anymore. Will I continue to tag along behind Anthony, reaching for his shoulder even as he leaves me behind? The truth is that I still hold onto hope that my brother remembers the love and friendship we once shared and will at some point respond to my persistence to draw him back into my life.
The hands of the clock are sweeping onward: Surely it's time to pick up the phone and give my childhood idol a call.
Catch me on Episode 27 of Launch Pad!
Learn more and listen to the episode here.