High expectations, low resolve.

I know I’ve been hard on him all my life and sometimes it was hard to set aside our differences, majority of the time. I believe throughout his life he’s had this conflict of expecting a lot but never settling for less than what he wanted to see happen. His resolve to settle was always less than what he expected to see in life. He was use to being hand fed by a silver spoon, living off the silver lining of life and when things got tough because the stars didn’t align for him he gave up.

We grew up pretty poor growing up and he was a favored child all the years I knew him. I’ll continue to roast him in his passing because that opportunity to do so has passed. He was my young kid brother and he had so much more coming to him. There’s so much frustration and misunderstanding of who we were and what we were in life to each other.

I dreamed he visit once just recently. I was resuscitating him in the dream, and he came to life again. He kissed my forehead and said “Stupid”. A very normal answer based on profound knowledge of who he was. I was tearing up, I wanted to say so much but all I could think of was how selfish he was.. how much of an idiot he was to leave us the way he did. How hard it was for my parents to let him go – no parent should bury their kid.

I always saw him in a heroic light, I sometimes referenced him to the redeemed exiled king of “Lord of The Rings” King Aragorn. I had bought him a Aragorn replica sword for his room in 2010 (?) with all the money I had made working banquets for The Shaw Conference Center.  He in exchange never bought anyone anything in the family for the years I knew him. I know it was hard to pull out the money for special occasions to buy something for someone no matter how cheap or stupid the idea was.  I would have liked anything he would have pulled out just to say I got something from him.

He was solitary, spoke little unless it was about business or monetary gain, judgmental and most of all closed off his life to people in his family. I wrote a poem as a memorandum to our loss. It was the best I could do, I hope it would reach him where ever he was. I couldn’t understand who he was in the end and what drove him to be who he was at the end of all this. He was an enigma to me even in the end. He was just my kid brother in the end no matter how he treated us and behaved I didn’t care. I just lost a chance and opportunity to redeem my kid brother.. The glimmer of hope that we would resolve the friction and conflict between us as kids in the end.

I hate how he was so calm and collected talking about what he was about to do before he passed away. He was so smug, he really needed that smack on the head. To wake up and realize that it was his life he was talking about and it effected everyone around him also. Everyone who knew him and worried for him would be effected. But even after all that, never visiting me at the hospital while i was there – I guess he was just going through too much stuff and struggling with his own life to reach out to me.

Even after all that, I forgive him. I just hope he gets everything coming to him. Our frustrations, anger and especially our love. I hope that guy finds peace. I wish him well.

NN.