My brother's favorite vice was injecting cocaine and that must have been some great high to be worth wrecking all the lives around him. It was a cyclone of drugs, idol worship and excess and for me to try to step into it meant that I was going to get blown away, threatened, and probably hurt.
“It’s impossible to reason with unreasonable people,” he said, touching on the hard thing that had brought me here.
“Like drug addicts who are leaching off their elderly parents or children who are shunning their mother or father? There is no measured, pleasant conversation that would change their minds,” I said.
“That’s right, Mare,” he said.
“I don’t want to be measured or pleasant anyway. I haven’t met Frank’s son but I’ve met my brother. My brother J.J. hated interference while he was taking advantage of my parents. And the more I gave to my parents, the more J.J. took. Not only that but my parents would just hand over whatever they had to him. His friends and his druggie acquaintances came in the house and took the food I made for Mom and Dad. They would stay there, live there, use up everything my parents had. I went over there one day and all their living room furniture was gone and found nowhere to sit.
“I remember my mom crying to me and saying she just couldn’t eat pizza one more time and I wondered where all of the good food had gone that I made and brought them,” I said and tried not to start crying again from the anger welling up inside me. “Even back in my 20s and he was a teenager, J.J. got so angry with me that he chased me through my parents’ house with a baseball bat, threatening to kill me.” I felt Gerry gasp and pull back to look me in the face and then pulled me tighter to himself.
“Even though my dad made good money before he retired and we had whatever we needed and most of what we wanted, it wasn’t enough for J.J. My brother saw anyone who had a dollar more than he had as rich and someone to envy and hate and therefore they needed to be taken advantage of. My dad didn’t get his whole pension and my mom’s health put them into bankruptcy. My ex-husband and I didn’t have enough money to live on when my parents were elderly, but I was making food, taking it to them, and watching addicts and prostitutes carry it out of the house.
“My parents adored my brother and even though he was in his 50s, he acted like a spoiled brat every day of his life. They would give him anything and everything they had. It was a cyclone of drugs, idol worship and excess and for me to try to step into it meant that I was going to get blown away, threatened, and probably hurt.
“J.J.’s favorite vice was injecting cocaine and that must have been some great high to be worth wrecking all the lives around him. I never heard of anyone doing that before. I clearly don’t know the answer, Gerry. I don’t know what I could have done differently except let it blow itself out and that did not happen until both my parents died. It took years. Decades, really.
“When it did happen, when it did end, J.J.’s last gasp was standing in the funeral home when my dad died, screaming at me to give him money because at the age of 52, he was trying to get on his feet, yet again. The funeral was the last time I saw him and I haven’t looked back.”
I was out of story and wondered if this is where Frank’s story was headed. I thought it through many times, and I wondered how much dope I could have bought and handed over to my brother that would have helped push him over the edge and out of everyone’s life forever.
“Mare, I want you to help Frank, but I want you to stay away from his family,” Gerry implored.
“I will, Gerry,” I promised him but didn’t tell him it was because I’m afraid that in my anger, I might be just as dangerous as Frank’s son. Or more so. The possibility existed that I might one day be prosecuted for my Christianity but there also existed a slight possibility that I would be prosecuted in a court of law for my sin as well. Given the right circumstances, I’m certain I’m capable of any sin.
Copyright 2021, 2022. Mare Loch © All rights reserved. Excerpt from Orange Grove: The Reformation of a Midlife Wife by Mare Loch.
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