Letter to My Brother Don

The following is a letter I wrote to my brother Don last night. It's been almost four years since he committed suicide. It is not a sensitive, caring, selfless letter. It is a for-crying-out-loud letter, a WTF letter, a what-the-hell-do-you-think-you-were-going-to-achieve kind of letter that I needed to write last night. It's basically for my benefit that I wrote it, because I needed to lash out and I hadn't done it yet, at least not with the intensity that I felt I needed to. Then, I decided to post it on my blog. I don't know why I put it on my blog. Maybe I thought someone out there could relate to my anger.

Letter to My Brother Don

Donny, you brat. Why didn’t you say good-bye to me at the airport? You dropped me and my daughter and grandson off with our luggage and just walked out of the terminal. You just disappeared. That was the first sign that something was weird, that something was wrong. You wouldn’t have done that if you were okay. You were not okay, but you didn’t tell me. And I failed to ask. I thought you did that because you were fed up with us, that we had stayed too long and we had started smelling like three-day-old fish.

All your life you used to say to me, “You are my Guru!” HA! And then you shot me in the heart! You didn’t know, maybe, or maybe you didn't care, but that bullet not only shattered your heart, but it shattered mine as well. If you had known it was going to pierce my heart and break it into a million pieces, would you have shot it into yours?

Now it’s been almost four years, and I am still crying myself to sleep. Nobody knows except Krishna (God) how much your death has affected me. Now your obituary page is old and cold, but my heart hasn’t forgotten that it was shot with a bullet four years ago, by my soul-mate, my beloved brother who is also a singer like me (I used to bounce my songs off of you before I would finalize them), who is also an actor like me, who is also a writer like me, who is also an artist like me. But where are you now, you brat? Where the hell are you now? 

Last month I cried on Elizabeth’s lap at a coffee shop on Colfax. She tried to console me, but I don’t even remember what words she said to me. It just felt good to cry on the lap that my brother had loved. This morning, Elizabeth sent me an article to help me understand that your death wasn’t about me, or her, or anyone else in our family. It was about you.

But Donny, it IS about us. It's about you, but it's also about ALL OF US WHO LOVE YOU. It's about all of us who were torn up--torn asunder--after your death.

After reading the first article, I kept hitting buttons that led me to other articles. I read article after article about suicide and mental health and bi-polar and you-name-it. After reading all morning, I felt I had a better understanding of what I should or could maybe have done, but didn’t know how to do. Shouldacouldawoulda. So all that reading actually didn’t help much, although it gave me a connection to a support group of people who have been suicidal and who try to help people who are suicidal. That was perhaps of some benefit to me, except that it made me start thinking about you again, and again the anger rose up in my heart.

Donny, I'm sorry to tell you this, but I haven’t been able to forgive you yet. I don't know how the rest of my siblings feel about your death now, but I am still struggling with negative emotions. I need you to help me forgive you. I need you to help me understand why you did it. Although you appeared to me momentarily like a vision that horrible morning and smiled and then left, as if to say good-bye to me, that wasn’t enough. I want more. I want an explanation. I want you to help me forgive you. I love you so much, and you know it. Why did you take yourself, my beloved brother, away from me? I'm reaching out because I want to be able to forgive you and move on.

Your loving but still angry sister,

Phalini (aka Francie)