Perspective: 'I wrote about my brother who is an alcoholic and meth user. I couldn’t believe how many people could relate.'
By Cathy Free April 11 at 8:00 AM While wiping the dust from my eyes in a storage unit jam-packed with mementos last month, I suddenly was struck by a sad reality: After 78 years, my mother’s history had come down to three hours.
“Get some keepsakes and let go of the rest,” she said. We’d planned to sort through everything and donate most of it later this spring, but Karen and I didn’t have that option now. We understood the manager’s frustration. If anyone could get evicted from a prepaid storage unit, it was our brother. For more than three decades, I've been dealing with the fallout of my brother’s addiction, beginning in 1986 when he “bought” my old Volkswagen Beetle with a promise to make payments but instead sold the car a month later and kept the cash.
For us, it wasn’t always this way with my brother. Even now, there are glimpses of the softhearted man who left a box of chocolate cherries on my doorstep one Christmas Eve even though he couldn’t afford them. Or the time I spotted him reading my favorite book, Eudora Welty’s “One Writer’s Beginnings,” to our mother one night in a soft and low voice.
It was a chilly spring night when my husband and I taped the notice to the front door. Suddenly, the garage door opened, and there stood my brother, illuminated in the driveway. I was terrified.“Cathy, I’m sorry. I know I deserve this. Don’t worry — I’ll find an apartment.” He hugged me, and I burst into tears. “Please, please, get some help,” I once again told him. “I’ll go with you to detox and help you get counseling. But you have to want to do it.”Then he changed the subject.
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