The back story is a tragic one. My brother apparently succumbed to depression, sought solace in a bottle, was disowned by his family, divorced by his wife, and died in a homeless camp.
He and I had not been in contact since my mother died seventeen years ago. I got a vaguely uncomfortable feeling around him and his wife and I just didn’t make an effort to stay in touch. As the years went by it got easier and more comfortable not to call. Of course his phone dialed out. That’s what I told myself, but I felt guilty about it.
Now I know the reason for that uncomfortable feeling. He, his wife, and children got drawn into a very fundamentalist church after moving to Colorado Springs from California (where they were completely secular as far as I knew).
This church is part of the Presbyterian Church in America. They split off from the Presbyterian Church USA because they opposed the ordination of women. Not only are women not allowed to become ministers, they are allowed no other role in the church although I suppose they can teach Sunday school. In addition to the usual fundie stuff — anti-gay, anti-woman, Biblical inerrancy, etc. — and the hardline Calvinist stuff — double predestination, they are tied in to the Colorado Springs dominionist complex. They are heavily involved with Navigators for instance.
So I went out to attend the memorial service with great trepidation. I didn’t know if he would be held up as an object lesson in what happens to sinners and reprobates or if there would be a lot of airbrushing — glossing over how he died.
It turned out there was both. We got a hardline fundamentalist sermon worthy of Jonathan Edwards about justification by faith alone. And there was airbrushing. Actually, airbrushing doesn’t begin to cover it. I got home yesterday and my mind is still blown. That’s why I felt compelled to write this diary.
Now I have no knowledge of the accuracy of what was told about their life in Colorado Springs since I was not in contact with them during that time, but I know something about my brother’s and my life growing up, about my brother’s young adulthood before he moved to California, and I know something about my parents.
The first alternative fact was that my brother and his wife were not divorced. This church does not allow divorce except in cases of violent physical abuse. Apparently that was the initial story — that my brother had been physically abusive to my sister-in-law. I never believed it. My brother was not a violent person ever. By the time of the memorial service, though, it seems the story had been changed. There simply was no divorce. It never happened.
Then came the alternative facts about my parents. My father was elevated to the bench. He was an attorney. In fact he was a member of the National Lawyer’s Guild (Oh, how I would have loved to have laid that one on the Elder and watched his face), but he was never a judge. My Unitarian Democratic mother was simply airbrushed out of the story. The word “mother” was not even spoken, as if my brother, like MacDuff, was not of woman born.
Then there was the story about how my brother met his wife. I know the facts in that case because I was there at the time. They met when she married one of my brother’s close friends. My brother was married to his first wife at the time. Her husband later deserted her and my brother’s marriage fell apart and they eventually got together.
In the alternative fact version, there were no previous spouses. They met on a canoe trip. My brother lost his hat. She dived into the water to retrieve it and it was love at first sight.
All of this is so strange I had to write about it. It was fascinating, in a horrifying way, to see the way in which these people manufacture an alternative reality not just with respect to politics or science, but even with regards to the every day trials and tribulations of the human condition.
The gist of the alternative story is that my brother was never divorced from his second wife. There was no first wife. There was no Unitarian Democratic mother. He was not an apostate, but a faithful Calvinist believer to the end. He died of pneumonia in the loving bosom of his family, not in a homeless camp.
I know one thing no one else knows, however. After my cousin got the first disturbing phone call from my brother, we were frantically googling to find any kind of contact information for his kids to try and see what was going on. We found it on Colorado’s online data base of registered voters. As I was searching for an obituary this past week, I stumbled on that data base again and I discovered that my brother had updated his voter registration information (he must have used someone else’s address) and changed his party affiliation from Republican to Independent. I would like to think that he died in a state of grace — Unitarian grace — that he knew a moment of peace before he passed and that he did not suffer.