AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

On October 18 of this year I was at my parent's house celebrating my brother's 48th birthday. He was a Type I diabetic since he was 19 and the disease, not well managed, depression and alcohol was wreaking havoc with his spirit and his body.

On October 29 my mom found him at his house dead in his bed. Shocking, but not surprising and very, very sad. He was a master woodworker and could make anything you could dream up. If you wanted something and he didn't know how to do it, he'd figure it out. But he was one of those people who wasn't very proud of what he did.

A graduate of UW-Madison with a degree in business communications, he was rather surprised no one handed him a job. It was the second biggest shock of his life. The first was the diabetes, when he found out he was not invinceable. He was a very handsome guy and had first pick of all the ladies and he put a lot of stock into that. He was very smart and school came easy. It was life that got hard.

When he finally opened his own business doing woodworking and interior finishing he had a small but wealthy list of clients who fought over him. He made a very good living and by that time had a wife, stepson and two kids of his own. But he thought he should've been using his degree. Doing big business things. Being somebody "important." Things don't always have fairy tale endings.

They happily rented a small home in the middle of several acres of land. The kids grew up safe and sound, with a place to ride bikes, and to watch every sort of wildlife Wisconsin has to offer. He even shot a turkey in his front yard and grilled it.

One day a 100 year old oak fell on top of the house. The owners decided to raze the building. He and his family bought a house. His wife decided the house wasn't for her and left. It was the beginning of the end. Gone were the idyllic days in the small rental. Now there was a mortgage, property taxes, and repairs. Single parenting was hard. The kids played the parents off each other. My brother and his ex were not civil to each other at all.

He finally found another woman to love. He fell hard. And only a few months into the relationship he found her dead in her bed due to a brain aneurysm. No one - not friends, not his kids, not my parents, not the doctors nor the counselors - could help. He knew better. He promised counseling and didn't follow through. He tried antidepressants but they "didn't work" after being on them a couple of days. Tough love didn't work. Enabling didn't work.

Little did I know when I told my mom that he needed to get help or he was going to die 10 days later he would. Little did he know how many people loved him. Hundreds of people showed up at the funeral. His friends. The kids' friends. My parent's friends. My sister's friends. My friends. The guest book is filled with names of people I know but had no idea were there. The funeral home expanded the room twice during the visitation to accommodate so many people. I heard story after story of how many people he shoved away or ignored in the last few years. And I heard story after story from people who loved him. From people who he helped.

One of his old girlfriends gave my niece a bracelet he gave to her when they were dating in high school. She hasn't taken it off.

I tell myself there wasn't anything I could've done. That no one could've done anything. But in the back of my mind I will always wonder. I will try to figure out, like some Sudoku puzzle, if there was another solution. Any solution except the one that happened.

So now my parents have two living children. My nephew and niece only have memories of their father. My 12 year old daughter wears one of her uncle's fleece shirts. It's not supposed to be this way.