When I lost my Dad on May 4, 1999 it was very difficult since we were very close. I was his only daughter among four boys and that made for a special bond. I was my Mom’s caretaker and it hurt when I lost her on May 26, 2010. Both Mom and Dad had major heart attacks and were living on borrowed time. I knew that the day would come when I would lose them. There was nothing to prepare me for the shock of losing my older brother. He had gotten a clean bill of health a couple months previous. Suddenly he was dead and a part of my heart was ripped away.
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Mike and I were 16 months apart. Mom always talked about how sweet and good Mike was. She also made sure to let me know that I was the one who taught him how to get into things. My take on it was that I was only motivating him because he had a tendency to be lazy. We were very competitive with each other. One thing I was not shy about though was trying to protect him. It seems odd that he was the big brother but I was the protector. Mike had a gentle streak that his spitfire sister didn’t have. He would turn the other cheek while I went into full on attack mode. This meant that bullies would try and pick on him. However I fought dirty and they soon learned that it wasn’t worth the trouble trying to take me on.
Mike was always intellectual. What he didn’t have though was common sense. Dad used to complain that Mike’s head was up in the clouds and locked. I tended to be more practical and Mike came to depend on me to help him make common sense decisions. He was also very religious and wanted to become a Catholic priest. He lasted one year in the Seminary. He had never been away from home before and he just couldn’t hack the seminary life. He joined the Army at the time that Vietnam was raging and ended up doing two tours of duty there.
Vietnam really damaged Mike inside. He was never the same after he came back. He earned the Bronze Star for bravery there. His camp came under attack and he ran and picked up two comrades and carried them to safety. He didn’t realize he had been hit until later that evening when he was taking a shower and saw that shrapnel had struck him in the leg. He came down with amebic dysentery in Vietnam. He had neurological damage to both arms and both legs. He had to live with the horror of watching people he knew die. He never talked about Vietnam. All he ever said was that he wanted to go back and see the place because he loved the people. I could tell though that there was a great deal of pain inside.
I moved down to North Carolina to be close to his only child and his grandchildren. He was supposed to have joined us down here. He had urged me to move and said he could finish up getting the house ready to sell. I kept asking when he wanted me to come back up and help get things finished and he kept putting me off. He had things he needed to do and places of his to clean out.
What he didn’t tell me was that he was spiraling down into becoming an alcoholic. He learned to drink in Vietnam. When he was under extreme stress he would turn to the bottle. He said he was having trouble with shaking and the Doctor thought it might be the onset of Parkinson’s. His Doctor was known to be a very poor doctor. He was going to go in for more tests. I asked if he wanted me up but he said he would be okay and to wait until after the tests to see what was going on. A few weeks later I got the call from the Emergency Room. He had fallen and hit his head. I asked to talk to him and he claimed that he was okay they were just going to transfer him to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. His nurse called back a few minutes later after getting permission to talk to me. He had fallen and hit his head and was on the floor for three days before some friends broke down the door and found him. He had broken a disc in his back. He was as far from okay as you could get.
I was bringing his daughter home from work when she got a call from the hospital. Mike was in critical condition and was in danger of death. I called and talked to the hospital and was told that he had been doing better. They were doing mild therapy for his back when all of a sudden he started throwing up. It got into his lungs and he lost consciousness and his heart stopped. Oxygen had been cut off to his brain. He died a few hours later without ever regaining consciousness as I was packing to take his daughter up to Indiana.
I was shocked when I got to the house. The kitchen was wall-to-wall empty wine containers. Wine was spilled on the floor. Empty glasses were everywhere. The downstairs was trashed. There was barely any food in the refrigerator. When I went upstairs I almost lost it. In the upstairs bathroom the floor was wall-to-wall feces and blood. There were bloody handprints where he had tried and failed to pull himself up. There was dried feces on his bedroom floor and in the hallway. It is a sight that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I made sure his daughter did not come upstairs until after I cleaned everything up. I could not let her see that.
When we went through his things from the hospital I found a bottle of medicine. His nurse before he turned critical had said they wanted to check and see about his blood pressure medicine. He told them he would take the medicine at night and would fall in the morning. The medicine in the bottle turned out to be a strong medicine for epilepsy. Mike was not epileptic! The side effects on the medicine were horrendous. It caused deep depression and suicidal thoughts.
Mike was clearly not thinking well towards the end. He took most of the money Mom had left him as well as the money that was in the account to run the house and gave it to friends for a business for massage and beauty supplies. It was his daughter’s legacy. He took out a loan and put his car up as collateral. People knew he was drinking but did nothing to help him. No one bothered to call me.
I now am trying to clean up the mess made by his finances. I have to try and sell the house on my own. I am trying to keep his daughter together. She was his only child. When he and her mother divorced Mike got custody.
The hardest part for me though is trying to understand what happened. The death certificate was delayed by weeks because the Coroner wanted to investigate what made him fall. I need to get the report when I get up there and have the legal papers in hand making me his executor. I strongly suspect that his incompetent doctor gave him more then one wrong medicine.
I find myself feeling shattered by Mike’s death. I keep wondering if there was something I could have done. Should I have just driven up without telling him? If I had been there I would have gotten him to the V.A. They owed it to him as a veteran to take care of him. I know I could have stopped the drinking. He would always listen to me. I get alternately depressed and angry. Damn it I was supposed to be moving him down to North Carolina to be with his family. I wasn’t supposed to have to give his eulogy. I’m tired of having to be the responsible one. I am tired of having to be the strong one. I’m tired of the pain. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I feel like the song “Make the world go away. Get it off my shoulders.”
I had bought him a special Christmas present. Friends overseas make L’arpies (Little ‘appy Rock People) to help in the fight against child abuse and pornography. I had them make a Knights of Columbus one for him. He was so proud of being a Knight. I was so looking forward to seeing his face when he opened it. I miss him terribly.
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