My Brother's Back

I haven't seen him in over five years. My husband helped him unload the U-haul at my parents' house today, but I won't get to hug his neck until Friday. It's worth missing (sigh, again) the Veterans' Day parade.

I haven't seen my brother in over five years, and it's no one's fault, really. He's been in Central Florida for about the last eight or so years. He came up for a couple of Christmases. He came up for his Godson's baptism. He came up to help my mom during all of my dad's surgeries to repair his abdominal aortic aneurysm. I haven't seen him since.

My parents have visited him every year for a week at Thanksgiving.

They have offered to fly him up here for a holiday. But he hasn't come.

The kids have been too young to travel that far and not drive someone crazy. But we've been thinking, soon they'll be ready.

It's no one's fault, really.

He followed his job from Georgia to North Carolina to a management position in Florida. But the warehouse firm he worked for didn't treat him on the up and up, so after years of putting up with them, he resigned before they could unfairly skewer him like they had done to some of his peers.

He fell in love with a woman and her son, and she stood with him during his long unemployment. The economy, if you haven't heard, has been slow to recover in Florida, and who only knows what trash his former employer was spreading about him. She worked a good job, and my brother was a sort of a house-spouse: cooking great meals, keeping the house clean, being there for the young boy & helping him improve in his reading and school work, helping her move into a house and helping fix it up. The boy had his father to visit, his "real" grandparents to spend time with, so there was no time to travel to his "live-in" family. But something just didn't work out, and she asked him "to find somewhere else to live."

It's no one's fault, really. So he asked to come back here, to live, to figure out what to do next. We are glad to have him back, for however long he will be. We're glad that he has the trust & love & fondness for us to come back. It's not easy, once you've left, to ask, "Can I come back?" I've had to do that in my life, but under circumstances of my own making as I made an utter shambles of "my college career."

It's no one's fault, really. But I guess I'm glad it's working out this way.