Brother and Sister - not just then and now

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How has your disability affected your relationship with a brother or sister?

Name: Liz Seger
Email: lseger@iaw.on ca
Date: 18 Sep 1999
Time: 18:20:17

Story

I can empathize with your story. I used to always wonder why I was the only child with a disability whose older brother hated her, and it bothered me . Other people with disabilities had supportive siblings who loved and cherished them, why not me? This bothered me until I turned forty; it doesn't bother me anymore.

My brother is six and a half years my senior and from what I heard from my mother and my aunt thought the light was just supposed to shine on him. He was the youngest and was quite doted on -- until the baby came along. I don't know how my parents explained it to him or if they explained it to him. All I know is that he locked my mother in the bathroom, while she was in the last stages of labour, until she promised he could order a full Hopalong Cassidy outfit minus the horse. I was born twenty minutes later at 27 weeks and I think he'd have preferred the horse.

Because I needed eye surgery my mum took him and me to my eye surgery in Illinois where we stayed a few months and where my brother had to start grade one, which is traumatic enough. But, in a foreign country, it had to have been difficult. When I got older and heard that story I took on some of the guilt for that. He was never happy at school and I thought: well ... because of me, he had a bad start.

I never remember my brother supporting me except for one occasion when I was in middle school. A bully took my glasses and threw them into the football field and laughed. I was sent home after the other kids found my glasses, and the next day the bully came up to me and apologized. I learned later, under duress though, my brother and some of his friends had intimidated the kid into apologizing, but I never heard it from my brother. Just the younger sibs of his friends.

I also heard from them how he'd make fun of me at the teenage parties he went to. His friends would go home and tell their parents and brothers and sisters and, of course, they'd tell me. My friends began to refer to my brother as the jerk of a brother you have. Funny enough -- I seemed to have more friends than he did. He favoured the tough "cool" bunch none of whom resembled Fonze.

He had his problems, plagued with kidney stones and had to spend months hospitalized. Sad to say, rather than building a bond, it increased his hostilities. He thought and still does that "being sick" gets you lots of attention and sympathy. He seemed to need to think that. To hear him tell it he had a horrible life and childhood. Poor me syndrome reigned supreme.

He quit high school in his junior year. I went on to graduate from high and and get two degrees. The "defective" (me) only took "bird " courses though and we know universities give you degrees for bird courses, don't we?

I offered to reception in his office when he needed a receptionist but got told, "I wasn't good looking enough."

I still am hearing the Tommy Smothers routine that mum always liked you best, and he's past fifty and he's convinced his wife that it's true, too. I tell them if and when he gets to Heaven to take it up with them there; I can't do anything about it here.

At my father's funeral a dozen years ago. I was standing by the coffin and a well dressed gentleman came up to me and said, "Who are you?" I said I was the deceased's daughter. To which he said, "Oh, John never told me he had a sister. I'm his boss. "I looked him straight in the eye and said levelly, "That's OK, mister, I don't tell people that John's my brother, either."

But the best one happened when my mum died. I had just had ostomy surgery and had only been home from the hospital a few days. Up until then, I had been my mum's principal caregiver; she was bedridden with complications of MS and died a week to the day I had come home from the surgery.

My brother and my sister-in-law, who holds a social service certificate, tried to have me put away in a home for the severely mentally handicapped. The case worker came to the door and told them to leave for about 45 minutes and we sat down, had a coffee and talked. My brother and sister in law came back in, the caseworker walked with them to the door and said, "You two can't be serious, in wanting her to be placed in the lodge; she'd be running the place in five minutes of getting there."

For my mental health, I no longer see my brother. I am missing out on my nephew. I keep in touch with my sister-in-law and my nephew by phone or email.

This past summer my brother underwent a critical surgery; he called all the people he had to call, but, when asked if he was going to call me, he said, "I don't have a sister."

As I said, until I was forty, five and a half years ago, his behaviour bothered me. It no longer does. I figure he's the one who's missed out in knowing me. He's missed out in celebrating my accomplishments. He is far more handicapped in every sense of the word than I will ever be.

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Name: ezweuvhvge
Email: lilhbp@tgjssj.com
Date: 19 May 2008
Time: 06:06:19