At 38, I am the oldest of three brothers, the middle brother is 35 and the youngest would have been 32 on June 10th, 2008.
Would have been because he committed suicide on March 5, 2008.
There was nothing left for any of us to do, and as much as everyone helped over the years, none saw suicide as a possibility.
Ironically, he quit drinking 4 years ago, and he told me at the time he quit because he was afraid he was going to kill himself from the behavior involved in the lifestyle that he lived.
I believe now that he had known this, unconsciously most of the time, but sometimes he may have allowed himself to think about it. He always said he would die young; when he made it past age 27 I breathed a sigh of relief due the significance of death at that age (Joplin, Hendrix etc.).
If this person has paranoid delusions, as my brother did, it is extremely difficult to deal with on a daily basis. He thought the CIA was after him ever since he returned from a trip to South America about 2 1/2 years ago.
What I have since learned about people with paranoid delusions, especially the specific delusion indicates the repressed behavior that is believed to be the originating cause of the mental illness. In his case, there is no doubt in my mind that he repressed homo-erotic fantasies and homosexual orientation since his earliest age. I also believe my father has repressed the same, and probably my middle brother as well, but my father is virtually no doubt in my mind.
Once I discovered this information and how well it fit with the progression of the illness, and how well the specific delusional construct fits with certain repressed issues, I now believe that there was nothing anyone could have done short of turning back the clock to the age when his sexuality was first repressed.
The only other possibility would have been my father, if he had been willing to consider seeing a therapist, that may have given my brother some hope to see what may result. As it happened, my father had a restraining order against him, and would only agree to let him stay at his house again (divorced/remarried) if he committed himself to 30 days at a treatment center. Of course, in my fathers mind there was nothing wrong with him; the problems were all my brothers problems. So long as the parents blame and scapegoat children for what psychological issues the parents refuse to face, families will continue to suffer this ultimate tragic consequence.
Now that some time has passed since the funeral, I have, for now, distanced myself from my father again because of his verbal, emotional, mental abuse is horrendously destructive. Prior to my brothers death I had no contact with my father since 1999, so 8 years total. I had spent some time in the few months before my brothers death with my father, and it was difficult at best.
In the aftermath, I spent some more time than I would normally with he and his wife whom I like very much, but his behavior deteriorated pretty quickly into a constrant stream of condescension, abusive put-downs, outright laughter at my expense, and on and on . . . each time it happened, I was well enough that I did not get upset, and got good at waiting for him to reallize that no one else is laughing with him, and then I would ask him to please tell me what is so funny and why he feels justified laughing at my expense.
Well, this is where the gift of my brothers suicide is starting to become a little less cloudy; because of my brother I feel strength to see my father for what he really is - a repressed, lonely, unaware of his sexuality and pathologically narcissistic bully - who treated his 3 sons as his own personal punching bag for all the emotions he would never dream of dumping on anyone else. I never, ever saw how he is literally afraid of everything. I always thought of him as being tough because he was tough with us, defenseless children that do not understand why they do what they do.
I wonder how much worse he is to me now, since I was the oldest and most compliant, I feel my brothers took more of the abuse that I was briefly exposed to before I told him spending time with him was not worth the time, energy or aggravation.
I said to him, "If you were not family, I would never spend 5 minutes with anyone who says what you do and laughs in my face constantly with nothing but denial, invalidation and minimization of the abuse you are inflicting on me. I would never spend time with you if you were not my father, and that means even less reason to spend time with a father that does nothing but inflict pain every chance they get."
He was shocked, but defensive, and still maintains I am being immature, I can't take a joke, I take things too seriously. etc. but I have heard it all before.
The shame for him is that my brother must have had it the worst of all of us because he had 3 years at home without my other brother or myself there for distraction. Plus, my brother had blackmailed my father from the age of 8 or 9, unbeknownst to the rest of us, but allowed my brother to do whatever he wanted, no questions asked, and he did. My mother drove herself crazy trying to discipline my brother, with nothing but a shrug from my father who would only say "I can't control him."
It ended up with my mom moving out of the house for my brothers senior year in high school, then she moved back after he graduated and went to Asia to hitchhike for 6 years by himself. That was the last of countless separations up to that point, but this time they both blamed their marriage problems on my brother and his behavior, a burden of uncertain significance.
Sorry this is long, I hope it helps. Some times it is just the way it was meant to be; I mean, if God is perfect, and all of creation is divine, then what happens was meant to happen, because if it was not meant to happen, it would not have happened the way it did. So everything that happens is for a reason, and it is up to us to learn our lessons, because when we learn we are also participating in the lessons learned by other people.
Thanks, be well and take good care -
Drew