Star Fork

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this, but it bears repeating: I am a child of the working class. My family didn’t live in abject poverty, but we lived right next door. When I was very young, my father worked as a construction laborer, hustling from one project to the next. When a project was complete, the paychecks stopped until he hustled up another job.  My mother worked outside the home, still atypical in the 1960s, not because she was a feminist but because we needed the money.  Over the years, my dad climbed the ladder from laborer to supervisor to project manager. He traded in his hard hat and pickup truck for a sharp suit and a company car. My mom worked at a drug store lunch counter while taking night courses at the community college until she landed her first office job.

California was a foreign country to the Okies and Arkies escaping the poverty-stricken south. Like other refugees before and since, my parents were aspirational dreamers who reserved their biggest dreams for their children There’s a cliché that newly arrived immigrants work in manual labor so their kids can go to college and become professionals and their grandchildren can become artists and philosophers.  My family tried compress that progression into two generations with mixed success. As a teenager I was certain I was going to be find fame and fortune as an actor and musician, but I was disabused of that notion pretty quickly.  I credit my early entry into parenthood for a much-needed reality check.  When you come from the working class, there’s no safety net. Your parents cannot bail you out when you fail. Artists must fail repeatedly, it's an integral part of the artistic process, but failure was a luxury I could not afford. I needed a regular paycheck, health insurance, some semblance of stability for my daughters. So, I found work in arts administration. At times, it's hard to be near the art but not of the art, but  I’m not complaining. I've had the luxury of working in close proximity to the art I love while reaping the benefits of a standard schedule, regular paycheck and health insurance.  It may not have been the “best” of both worlds, but it was both worlds and that’s a blessing.

My brother Bryan never made the transition from wannabe artist to family-wage career.  He didn’t have both worlds, he had neither. Is that why he committed suicide a year ago today?

In the years leading up to her death, my mother and I spoke frequently about Bryan. It was my privilege and honor to provide her with a place to offload some of the pain he caused. She told me about his scenes, his rages, his constant need for financial support. He was intensely volatile, physically aggressive, combative, manipulative, paranoid, defensive. He picked fights with my father that devolved into physical shoving matches. He constantly fought with his wife and, when she would kick him out of their house, he would drive to my parents’ house and scream at her on their phone. He was in constant conflict with his family, his community, the police. He was even involved in some kind of incident on the day my mother died. The only reason I know this is because he babbled something about it as we sat by her deathbed. The details were garbled and he never referred to it again after she died, so the whole story is lost, but it doesn't matter. The plain fact is, he caused my mother years of stress, breaking her heart over and over again until she died of an aneurysm.  

I never spoke a word of blame to him, but I admit, there was blame in my heart. 

My parents' deaths are still etched in my soul like a scar, the most painfully traumatic events of my life. In the midst of this suffering, my mentally ill brother plunged a knife into the wound and kept twisting, indulging in rages, tantrums, public scenes. I don’t know why. There is no answer, other than he was mentally ill, a fact made all too obvious by his suicide. I repeatedly urged him to seek treatment, but I couldn’t help him and I wouldn't allow him drag me down like he did my parents. I had to save myself.  I do not feel guilty for cutting Bryan out of my life; I did what I had to do for my own emotional health. But, I wish it could have been different. I wish we could have found our way to forgiveness and reconciliation.

When I was a child, we had no “family silver” or anything like it. Our kitchen drawer was full of mismatched metal flatware, including two forks with stylized starbursts on the handle, known as the “star forks.”  When I would set the table, I would very consciously give myself one of the star forks and Bryan the other. My brother Greg was the oldest son and closest to me in age; he was my serious rival for family supremacy. Bryan was never a threat; he was my baby brother and I doted on him.  We all doted on him. He was charming, funny, smart, cherished. He never had to prove himself to our father the way Greg and I did. He could be his smart-ass, shit-bird self and make everyone in the family laugh. 

And so it was, until it wasn't any more. 

What happened?  I’ll never know. All I know is, one year ago today, Bryan's mental illness reached its apogee and he took his own life. I pray he found peace .  May this pain mark the starting point in a journey towards forgiveness: forgiveness for him, forgiveness for myself.