I think that I have in me a fluid open mind that allows my thoughts to flow forth freely in a steady pace in an effort to draw a mental picture, broadly typed in a printed diary to capture a reader`s attention. I like to toy with this gift in times of searching for a clue on how to avoid omitting substance to my message. But I have concluded that at best, I am but an egoistic mediocre writer wannabe, self centered, self conceited in writing so many diaries about my childhood sufferings during very hard times -- and at worst, that I should feel ashamed of myself for never having even bothered to mention my only sibling that suffered even worst than I did, as I fawned at my own self promoted being.
I usually focused on how I wanted my written words to follow each other. Like Salmon, swimming steadily in a deep fresh water river uphill. In this life being a Pieces in my Astrological world I guess I expected my diaries to reach a certain point up stream, spawn and die. That is the gist of the ease in which I write and the expectations I look for in all my diaries here on Daily Kos. Unfortunately my written diaries in this world swim down stream and die, to be forgotten. I never struggled to write a diary though, until now.
In thirty-four diaries I have written with the ease aforementioned, none has given me a moment of anguish or difficulty as the troublesome mind-blocking I have encountered in trying to write diary number thirty-five. The Salmon are not biting and even the fresh water river is dry. I have deleted this foregoing diary numerous times. I am ashamed for finding this weakness of being unable to generate that fluid open mind set that I thought would always carry me through in times of despair or times of choosing the relevant topic to start a diary. The fluid tempo of my inner built self-guaranteed information station is failing me. I am very depressed today and I will do all in my power to write this diary. I want to ask my brother, for I know he is there listening, and I know he will read this -- to forgive me.
My Brother passed away this past Sunday at dawn.
He was my Hero. My protector who forbade me from joining his pack of friends that ran amok searching for food. He was seven years old and I was four when he would show up with fruit for me to eat. My brother had this survivalist mentality when he ran with a group of boys and men like a pack of wolves in search for food. He always seemed to find some train in a different part of our neighborhood that had pulled in to a large warehouse to unload their produce, mostly frozen fruit near fruit stands. He and his group would break the locks to the side doors and climb in during dark nights when sure no security was around. During the Great Depression period of our lives, it was not uncommon for men and even women to steal in order to survive and not starve. Many children, especially abandoned ones like me and my brother were distractions for adults so we had to fend for ourselves.
Yes the Great Depression was now in our rear view mirror these days. Only despair and hunger remained. I was caught in the middle.
He once told me that some men and women who were serving soup on a corner to people who were too poor and hungry had chased them away and denied him soup. My brother and his friends embarked on searching ways to survive and find food. It was the only way he told me. He had to steal to stay alive and that he would always come to check up on me. But he would never let me come with him, never.
One night as I slept under my grand mother`s house porch, hiding from the physical abuser Aunt who had beaten the crap out of me for her own sick pleasure, a shadow painted by the night moonlight got my attention. It was my brother standing in the yard close to the house. I did not want to come out because I did not want him to see my face. He knew my hiding place and came close and called me out. Even by moon light he noticed the blood on the side of my face. He grabbed my shoulders and demanded I tell him who hit me, or what happened.
To me, my brother was never a child. As an adult I would day dream that my brother and I had been born at the wrong time at the wrong place. As a child I always thought children were not supposed to be around in those times. He had this adult persona that caused others to want to be with him, to follow him. My Hero proved me wrong over and over again.
He was very mad and he cursed out loud at my aunt when I told him about the beating she gave me, causing a pierced ear to emit blood down my shoulders. I was shocked when he took a knife from his pocket and picked up a large stone and walked to the back of the yard. He stood in the middle and threw the stone through my aunt`s window causing a loud explosion of glass to fall inside. He started to go into the house but my aunt started yelling for my grandmother across the yard. My brother did not want me to be around if the police came.
"Come on", my brother said to me as he led me out of that yard. He took me to a homeless camping site where his friends lived. I was surprised to see my brother smoking a cigarette that night. It was the first time I remember he would allow me to be with him. In the camping site grown men and children the same age as my brother were telling jokes and drinking cheap wine. He told me to stay at his place on the homeless camp until he returned as he was going to work -- as he would describe his search for food at night.
He never broke into freight box cars on the trains that I wrote about in the last two paragraphs in this diary because he knew that my grandfather was a night guard on trains that ran on those particular railroad tracks behind my grand mother`s house. I now think that his main reason was to avoid trouble to come so close to me if the police wanted to investigate a broken door to a freight box car.
Sitting here writing this diary a fuzzy cloud of a painful memory cross my mind. This incident must have happened between the time he took me to his homeless camp site, and the stoning of my aunt`s window I cannot be certain. What I am certain of is, that it was the only time I ever saw my Hero cry in pain --as if it had happened this morning, I am very sad for that.
As I sat on the top step of my grand mothers high porch, here, some uncles and their friends were sitting around joking and smoking cigarettes and and laughing. By the side of the large house near the edge of the porch was a large and tall mulberry tree that produced large mulberries that it attracted all kinds of birds. My brother I remember, wanted to get some mulberries for both of us to eat. My uncles were laughing at my brother calling him a monkey as he climbed the tree which was not actually that hard to do for a kid. I heard a loud yell. My grand mother was standing on the door waving her fists at my brother and telling him to come down from the tree at once.
My brother jumped. The branch where he was standing on the tree was not too high. On the ground laying with its spikes facing upwards was this steel rake. My brother`s foot landed squarely on the spikes and several penetrated his foot. He screamed in pain as everyone realized what had happened. The spikes were visible coming up on top of my brother`s foot. It is one of the most horrible memories I remember about my brother. I did not see him again for some time and I cannot remember when we re-united again.
Another time I remember my Hero is when he failed to come back to the homeless camp site after leaving for work, as he would say. One of his grown up buddies who had been with my brother that night said that he had been caught by police trying to break into a box car. It is in this area of time that we started to drift apart my brother and I. Even when he came back I never learned what had happened to him when he was arrested. He would never want me to know what he did to keep me safe. My memory fades away and takes my brother`s image with it. I cannot remember a time when we sat down together at a table, or to have a drink or visit each other. We just drifted and drifted apart and I blame all this for the way we were brought into this world at such a horrible time in our human history.
When I was born my brother Joe was already running around in a room, if indeed I was born in a room, which I sincerely doubt considering how I was dumped like a piece of garbage into a trash bin not too long after birth. -- when a child is so vulnerable and in need of parents. In my old age I have learned to forgive and I did so to my mother -- if there is such a thing as a son forgiving his mother.
As I have written extensively, the only way some of my four other biological born siblings could survive starvation, my family had to separate and flee seeking food and shelter elsewhere. This way it was decided by my parents some would live. I happened to land at my grandmother`s house. There I came to wish I were dead instead of living under the heels of my aunts brutality.
Word of mouth later in life told me that three sisters and another brother perished.
I do not know this for sure. I have not even attempted to track them down simply because I really don`t care.
What I do know and care about is that my brother Joe passed away. As I now see this painful chapter in my life the loss of my sibling is devastating because he was the only and last link that I had to that family of such a long time ago that brought me into this world. My brother was always my Hero and he proved that again to me with his death. He had said according to my half sister, my baby Mom, to those who remember her here, that he did not want to be thrown down into a hole on the ground for the worms to eat him. He had suffered enough in life and wanted to be cremated. I loved my brother despite our ways in life and I regret not seeing him to pay him homage and tribute with a farewell kiss on his forehead. He would have blushed, I am sure.
I am now all alone.
I know one thing for sure though mi carnal. I will meet you again soon and then it will be very different I promise you that my brother..Adios I will miss you.