a birthday card

Picking out a birthday card for your brother should be easy right? Yeah, well, it used to be easy when I didn't have a brother who ended my parents life. It took me an hour today at CVS trying to find not the "perfect card", just "a" card at best, that I could send to my brother.

The first one I picked up had just a simple bird on the front and the inside read, "happy birthday-I'm so glad you were born". How could I send that? Maybe if he wasn't born, Mom and Dad would still be alive. Then I picked up others that said how special the person was or that were way too mushy or referenced cake and candles. My brother certainly will not be getting a cake or blowing out any candles, so I didn't want to send anything to depress him even more.

I stood there for a few minutes and thought to myself, if I could create a card to say exactly what I wanted to tell him, what would it say. It would say something like this:

Happy Birthday Brother,
I know this continues to be tough for you but I pray and hope you get closer to peace and a level of acceptance of your new life. Your new life without your parents and essentially, your entire family. We know you were sick and are sick but we cannot get past what has happened. Things will never be the same, I'm sorry for that. I understand medically that you did not want to do this and I blame 80% of this tragedy on the medication and what it did to your mind but I'm telling you, not everyone in the family understands and I hope one day you understand this. See, I believe everyone is accountable for their own actions, but in your case you were not. That's hard for me to swallow and for others too. You took away the two most important people to me, Christina, Aydan and yourself included. I don't think anyone will ever be able to "forgive" you per say but more so understand medically that it wasn't you. I don't know. Dealing with the loss of Mom and Dad is my main struggle but some often forget, I also lost you in this devastating tragedy as well. I've always cared about your well being. I hope you know that and I beat myself up that I could have helped prevent this, but our beautiful Mother loved and accepted you and trusted you to know end. Mom and Dad loved you very much. I know Christina, Aydan and I took the spotlight but you were always given the same opportunity. I begged you to get your GED, you were so smart and I truly believed one day you could be working a real job and talking more in public and be who we all knew you could be. You were a beautiful child growing up and you gave Mom and Dad a lot of joy in your early years. I'm certain you gave Dad a tremendous amount of joy when you were born. "his first son". But it's sad to report you and Dad never had that Father/Son relationship as you became an adult because of your condition. I think that is why Dad enjoyed Ted so much. He wanted that bond. Dad always loved you, defended you and made you dinner each and every night. Yeah, I miss his cooking too. I'll always be angry with you as you have changed our lives forever and have caused so much pain in my life, so many lives, but on April 29th, I will wish you a happy birthday and be thinking that you are doing okay. I'll always be wishing and hoping that you are okay.

So needed less to say, I didn't find a card that said all that. But I did manage to find your basic, funny, but not overly funny card that I felt was appropriate. It would make him quickly smile I had hoped as I made my purchase. Of course I didn't write anything I said in the above in the card. I don't want to upset him. I don't want to bring up Mom and Dad. It would make me feel worse knowing he was sad. I honestly would rather him move on, accept this, and adjust to his new life in this medical facility. Let us deal with the pain. I'd love to tell him that he took away my loving parents that were everything to me and how lonely and devastated I am. But I won't. I know my Sister has had these conversations with him but my take is, what good will it do?? Because at the end of the day, they are never coming back.

Christina is now going through the angry stage with Justin without him being aware of that. That's the tricky part of visiting and communicating with him. You don't want to give him false hope but you also want him to know we still care about him. We really do. This is just very complicated and very difficult. I need my Mom and Dad to tell me what to do. Christina and I do not know what to do......he is the reason for our nightmares, but he is our brother...