death is such a strange and freeing and interesting phenomena.
early easter sunday morning, my youngest brother william allen harris, 54 lost his battle with bone cancer. it was a rough road for bill, he suffered a lot at the end, i hear that bone cancer is excruciating and from seeing bill, that’s most certainly true. it was a relief for him to be gone, to no longer be suffering, but at the same time, his death brought up many, many issues for me. silly things, that i am sure everyone thinks about, but it’s really taken me for a loop.
i am more thankful now than i have been at any other time that i am married and had children. bill died alone in a way that i think very few people understand. he had never been married, never had any children of which any of us are aware. he didn’t have many close friends, none locally, and while it was his choice to spend much of his life alone and he spent a lot of time in his life keeping people at arm’s distance from him, but one has to wonder, at the end, if he thought it was worth it.
on top of that, we, as his living family, were responsible for taking care of disposing of the contents of his life. we spent monday and tuesday cleaning out his apartment. he didn’t really have much and it was sort of sad and pathetic to see the pains he went to to ensure that none of us felt slighted by division of his meager possessions. it’s amazing how in a couple of afternoons one can dispose of the contents of another human beings existence. that is still bothering me.
we had some of my brothers things still in a box, and one of the things we had planned on donating to an area charity was some liquid methadone that he had been given when he was still at home. on tuesday night, my nephew decided it would be a good thing to try to get high on, so he chugged like half the bottle, his girlfriend and mom woke me up early wednesday around 5:40am because he wasn’t breathing well at all. he was bluish grey, i breathed for him while my sister called 911, and we spent the next two days in the hospital. the boy was scared, but what would make someone do that to begin with? it’s not really what we needed in addition to my brothers death this week, and it’s made me more sad than i can even express. i had told him before that he needed to be out of my house by april 1. i told him i loved him like a son, but he is an adult now, and he needs to take care of himself. if he was making any effort at all, i wouldn’t do this, but the boy literally lives and exists right now only for the next high and it’s not a healthy thing for anyone, so i feel as though my choices are very limited with regard to him. i am sure he’s going to attempt to manipulate me, but i cannot allow it. right now i think the best thing i can do for him is let him go and stop enabling him to continue this destructive pattern in his life. he hasn’t worked or even seriously looked for work in over a year. he’s like my own son, but he has to find his own way in the world. this next week is going to be a tough week.
all of this seems to have placed both myself and my sister into a weird head space. i have been irritable the last few days, somewhat unmotivated, and sad. i am still doing all the things i am supposed to be doing and that i committed to, but it’s with a feeling of sort of going through the motions. i am sure this will pass, but i feel like i want to sort of be a hermit right now.
i have a bellydance performance this coming friday, and we have been rehearsing hard. a fire performance on may 3 is also taking a lot of rehearsal time. i will check in when i can. i am slowly trying to catch up on reading here. thanks so much to those who have stopped by. i still need this place, perhaps more than a realized.
it’s been a rough 15 months.
peace.
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