Wordsley, Stourbridge, England: 7 degrees, cold, cloudy and slightly rainy.
It has been two weeks since I arrived in England, and the time has rushed by. Only after two weeks have, I got to talk to my brother.
When I arrived on November 25th, my brother’s wife Debbie called me with the first words of incrimination: “Well, you kept this quiet.” I promptly answered, ” You hadn’t asked me.” I thought it was so strange that she was calling me, as she had never called me in the 20-plus years she had been married to my brother, so why did she call me now?
Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad blood between my mother and my brother and his wife. When my brother and his wife began to live together and finally married, they rented the house next door to my mother’s. At that time, for some crazy reason, our grandmother(my brothers and I) gave her savings deposit book to him and his wife to look after, which, until now, I do not know for what reason.
Consequently, for some other crazy reason, they cleaned out my grandmother’s savings account to upgrade and refurbish the house they rented next to my mother’s. When my mother found out what they had done, which was and is completely wrong, and the way my mother is, always wanting to be right, knowing everything, and is easy to incriminate others, etc., she can be extremely inconvenient to say the least which caused enormous confusion within the family on a tsunami scale.
At that time, I was already living in Brazil. My mother asked me to come back to resolve the issue, as there was a separation in the family. The problem was not resolved, and our grandmother wanted her money back. I came back a couple of months after when my mother called me. I think she called me in October or November, and I returned for Christmas at the beginning of December.
After talking to my brother, he agreed to pay back our grandmother in instalments over the next twelve months or so, which he began to do shortly after I returned to Brazil.
I am a kind of family sheriff, and it was not the first time I had to resolve a family issue. However, in this case, the rupture was too deep, so the family has been divided for the last 20 years or more, and until this moment, I don’t see any reapproximation.
Later, my brother and his family moved away, up north to Sheffield, because of his work, which, in some ways, made the situation worse in trying to heal the rupture. My mother and brother say they haven’t spoken to each other for at least 10 years.
During my short time living with my mother, I’ve observed her ability to move on and her acceptance of being alone and without family. I don’t think she is bitter but somewhat disappointed; she tends to play the victim and doesn’t take much accountability for her actions. Nonetheless, she has managed to create a life without family support.
I’ve also noticed that many of her friends share similar stories of having children, now grown up, who have distanced themselves or abandoned their parents, giving them little attention or importance.
My brother has always been a headstrong, hyperactive and uncontrollable. If there were a confusion in the street or at school when we were kids, my brother would usually always be in the middle of it, and with me, usually to resolve it.
Nowadays, my brother is an adult, a man, a father and a husband, only three years younger than I am. He is still highly strong, but of all the negative possibilities, e.g. drugs, alcoholism, crime, etc., he has turned out to be a dedicated father, a faithful husband and a provider for his family, which is very admirable; the odds of him turning out like this were very low to say the least in the past.
I admire and like him, but I think our ties as brothers are not as strong and as deep as they should be.
After my mother kicked me out of my home when I was 16, I went to London and then eventually abroad, and then to Brazil, and I made myself another life. He built his life with his family and friends and has done very well for himself, financially speaking, probably much better than I. He has his own house, car, etc. He can travel abroad once a year and has built himself a good life; besides being proud of him for what he has achieved, I am sincerely happy for him.
So, I’ve been in England for two weeks now, and we only got to speak today. The first sentences already contained provocation, sarcasm, and some small jabs, but in a reasonably healthy way. I will have to go up to Sheffield, where he lives, about 150 kilometres away, to visit him, his family, my nephew, and niece after Christmas and for New Year. Maybe it will be a meeting of long-lost friends, making us stronger and eventually brothers again, or not.
Let’s see!!!
It is impossible to recover the past, but we can value and give more importance to the future. We only speak once or twice a year; maybe this could be a reapproximation for the future, or sadly, the opposite.
In bed by 9:30 p.m.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Richard
