My brother Robert has been on my mind. He generally is. Which is a change from how it used to be with Robert. He was my goofy, odd, funny little brother; always getting into trouble but never meaning to do so. It just seemed that Robert was born suffering from a all-but-fatal case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was awkward, klutzy, and had the judgement capabilities of a frog. That is not an insult - I think frogs do pretty well making decisions relevant to their pond lives. It is just that Robert did not live in a pond. He lived in the world with the rest of us.
So Robert got into trouble right from the start, daily, inadvertently, without even trying! That never changed. And he also always got caught. My parents had a keen eye, ear, and sense of smell where Robert and his activities were concerned. They possessed an uncanny prescience about Robert.
As a result, Robert rarely - if ever - "got away" with anything! He even was blamed for things he could not possibly have done. No matter. He was a born scapegoat. Robert always lied about whatever incident. He was hard wired to immediately and always respond "I did not do it!" And one thing Robert could not do well was lie. He would fumble for words, look away, stutter, contort himself into Houdini-like shapes to avoid the blows that he knew were coming. And the whole time he was getting slapped, shoved, pushed, hit, he would keep protesting his innocence. He would repeat like a mantra, "I didn't do it."
Pretty soon, we all stopped listening to Robert because he became the child-who-lies. Everyone generalized his protests - those LIES - to everything Robert said. That became his persona. He was a liar, plain and simple! The family stopped expecting anything from Robert but for him to mess up and then lie. Robert was given a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that no one expected anything of him! He was freed from all of the normal childhood and teenage expectations and activities. He failed in school. He had no friends. He did not have any hobbies nor did he play a sport. He was not a reader, a writer, an artist. He did not get jobs delivering the newspaper or sweeping the grocery store. Nothing was expected of him. He was just Robert who lies.
The curse of this was that he never became anything. I do not mean that in a derogatory or demeaning way. He was a loving child of god, painfully ill-formed by nature and nurture. But he never matured; he never developed into his capabilities because no one thought he had any capabilities. He was not given affection, he was not enabled to develop self-esteem, he was not challenged to learn or to be successful. He just was left to be. Thus, upon reaching adulthood (in years, not in maturity), Robert was not equipped to handle the world. He had no skills, no social abilities. He was not trained to work or think. He was not raised to take care of himself. He was fed, clothed and sheltered - and ignored and derided.
Robert easily fell into the family disease at an early age. And it became the one thing he excelled at - alcoholism. He took to alcohol and drugs, immersing himself in the dreams that they gave him, the shelter they provided. Alcohol was his loving mother, his caring and proud father, his family, his friends, his successes in school, his major achievement in his life. And it became his life.
This was easy for Robert. His family had already "written him off" so the fact that he became a drunk and a bum at a young age was no surprise. And no concern either. It was just a natural extension of Robert who lies. And just as we negated and turned away from that child, so did we do the same to the adult.
I have so much to say about Robert - to Robert. My brother.
My brother who was murdered in December of 2003 in Eureka, CA. Once again, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Drinking and drugging, homeless and wandering, as he usually was. His bones were found buried in a forest in February 2004. No identification or distinguishing physical features remained. Robert was listed as John Doe. How fitting.
We had put put a missing persons report on Robert in March of 2004. He had been out of contact since November and that was not like Robert - he always stayed in touch with my parents. I received a phone call from the County Coroner in Eureka and it shattered my soul. The Coroner said they had a John Doe in the morgue who might be my brother. But there was really no good way to positively ID him other than doing a DNA match. So local police came and swabbed my cheek and my mother's cheek. Then we waited. Robert had suddenly gained a status that he never had in life. I thought about him constantly. I worried, I was fearful, anxious. I wanted to know who was in the morgue and I never wanted to find out.
In February 2004, the Coroner called me. The DNA was a match. We had found Robert. He was 52 years old. He was penniless, homeless. He never married or had a family. He was a drunk. A bum There were more than 30 stab wounds on his body. He did not die easy There was nothing kind and loving about Robert's death. Why should it be any different than his life.
