Happy Easter - Remember Those Who Are Truly Alone

I was taking a shower after I woke today hoping it would bring me to complete consciousness gently, feeling the warm soapy water flow over me, my head, and my back. I have found that sometimes I do some of my best thinking then, and maybe my most honest thinking, with all that warmth and steam opening up more than just my pores.

I thought of the day, Easter Sunday, and I thought about my brother, gone from me for the last several years. I thought how my mother always used to take us to Robert Hall and buy each of us a new suit for Easter and the round of pictures taken with my brothers and sisters and grandparents. But my oldest brother was always the star, the leader, the braintrust of the kids.

Then I was very sad to think of him dying alone, in a small apartment, of a stroke brought on from years of far too much alcohol and pills, of a soul sickness no amount of coaxing ,counselling, cajoling and love could ameliorate, even for a few days of his brilliant, confounding and painful life. He was the single brightest, smartest man I ever knew, and I've known scores of highly intelligent people. He could learn and master anything he desired. But to me he was always my oldest brother, my big brother. To have his approval was everything to me, I think, for my entire life.

So the fact we had an extremely hard time getting along always hurt me in a way that was unique and devastating, especially as I grew older. We both had our own ups and downs over the years as adults. And rather than being ever supportive, there were times I'm sorry to say we were far too competitive and jealous of each others success and too quick to understand the hows and whys of the other's failures. It seemed time and circumstance conspired against us both. But it was really just us that did the conspiring, to live within the needless boundries by which our hurt feelings penned us.

After not hearing from him for several years I received the terrible news that he had died alone and had suffered one final stroke that killed him. After finally catching up with family I had had no contact with for many years at his memorial service several of us, his brothers and sisters, pieced together his life of the recent past, as if we were putting a puzzle together upon hearing each other and his friends tell accounts of their contact with him the last couple of years. It was a portrait of struggle with old demons and occassional hope, really a reflection of his entire life.

What struck me was that not one single person, either family or friend, knew the entire picture. Not a one. That was the way he apparently wanted to live. It was as if his greatest desire was to live in this compartmentalized cocoon of the things and people with whom he found solace and safety. He knew little trust of people. These things combined to keep him isolated and alone. He lived a false security and in the end I believe the pain of that isolation killed him. The stroke was the medical reason. The real reason was a broken heart and a tortured soul. But that never shows up on the death certificate, does it?

It brings me great pain indeed to think of this basically wonderful person dying alone, in pain. How horrible a fate, to know you will die and have no one there to comfort you, to touch you with warmth and care, to help fight for you, to attempt your rescue as life slowly, painfully leaves you. No one to cry out to. I cannot think of a worse way to pass on.

We are a social animal blessed with abilities and a "devine spark" that makes us unique unto this earth. Our single greatest need is to be with others, to communicate, to protect each other, to touch, physically touch each other to offer love, warmth, care and support, even if it is simply a drive deep within to replicate the earliest loving touch we all received from our birth mothers. That touch, that love, that communion of ourselves with another is so necessary that to be without it means you cannot exist well or successfully. It is part of our souls, if you will. To know real human contact is all of this. To not know this human contact means certain death. We are simply built this way and this I truly believe.

On this day of renewal, of new beginnings, I want anyone who lives within the walls of a singular and lonely existence like my own brother to know that I put out my hand to you, that I, by this writing, hope to touch you in some way and to let you know you are NOT alone. No human being should live a life of hopelessness and isolation. I cannot stand idly by and allow fate to hand down a death sentence on those who's only mistake is to trust only themselves and let their souls, their "devine spark" to wither more with each passing day.

Why do I write this? I fear such lonliness everytime I think of my brother. I fear it could swallow me some day. I cannot sit idly by my own desire to live deep inside myself, my own fears and my own losses. Most of all, I never want to accept the idea of dying alone without the touch of someone who cares.

Happy Easter.