No one in his family could tolerate him. I couldn't stand to visit him, alone. I always took my son, when he came to visit. Triangulation, so I wouldn't be trapped alone with him and his judgments and blindness, his desperation and stuckness. The only virtue in any of this is that my father was proud of my son -- so, a vindication.
I've never made a secret about what a nightmare my birth-family was. One of the ways I'm a fool is that I think I have to say what I think. I stupidly think that's integrity. It's adolescent -- the immaturity of improperly understood rule-keeping. Honesty matters, but other people matter at least as much. I doubt I will ever master that idea.
Thinking about all this for the past few years -- trying to find my way out of the pit I was thrown into as an infant -- I have come to understand something that very much surprised me. I was the least-favorite child. This seems astounding. I was the cute one. I wanted to be good. I was little, and should have been protected. None of that mattered. Brenn, the narcissist crybaby, was my father's favorite. It must be because he was the firstborn. Kip was my mother's favorite -- as worthless, violent, and hateful as he was, he got every favor from her. In that cultish family, I was the child sacrifice.
I have always been betrayed. Not self-pity -- but it's the reason I cannot trust. My mother sacrificed me. My father had no time for me. He told me a number of times across the years, starting when I was a teenager, that he didn't like me. He told me with those very words. "I have to love you, because you're my son. But I don't have to like you." That's the kind of stupid honesty I've been guilty of. Because it was true, he thought it should be said. Damaging to the spirit and to the relationship. Unwise.
Apparently from very early, my father had decided I was homosexual. I had to figure that out. Well, no -- eventually, in my thirties, he actually argued with me about it. He took the "you are gay" side. You know, because I listened to classical music and read books. And other things he did not say but I put together ... one of them, truly vicious.
Nothing was left for me -- just middle-class duty on the positive side, and otherwise neglect and abuse. I was an afterthought. This is not a reason I pity myself. By the time I was able to notice this, I was so completely alienated and isolated that it was too late. It's only 50 years later, give or take, that I even realized it. I pity myself because of the wasted time and potential. Locusts have eaten the years -- a family of locusts. That's true, but it's on me, the way addiction is on the addict.
I've had two important ideas. The first, I had not long after it was clear about Brenn's lies and cowardice and theft. It's that he, and incidentally my other brother, would have to be forgiven. It's the only way I can make up to my father for the not-good son I was. Nothing I can do, to show him love now. Only to love the worthless, selfish, abusing brothers of my childhood. Well, maybe love is too much to ask -- love your rapists, love the people who used you like toilet paper. But forgive, if there's a meaningful difference.
The other idea is that both of them, but mostly the most-betraying brother, Brenn, Brenn Ko -- to me they were like the brothers of Joseph, in the Bible. His brothers dropped him into a pit, to kill him, but ended up selling him into slavery. They meant it for evil, because of jealousy and spite. And Joseph suffered, but ultimately he prospered. It's a nice story. The lesson is that the evil, the envy and hatred of his brothers worked finally to a good purpose.
Trapped in that crazy, frankly wicked family, I didn't understand. I thought abuse was the order of things. I didn't stop to wonder why my brothers were such scum. To say they were jealous seems inadequate -- it's too cheap an answer. I was just a white-haired little kid, in no way a favorite in that family. I suppose it was that I was at the bottom of the pecking order -- the easy victim. So, the convenience of corrupt human nature.
Almost three years ago now, while Brenn was playing his waiting game, plotting his theft and flight, I made assurances to various family members that I thought he had integrity. I remember saying he was not a thief. Obviously I was wrong. Years before I had pointed out to him a lack of integrity in his behavior, and he was very offended. Time has proven that observation to be right.
I had a conversation with him shortly after my father died, and he went on about how Kip's family, "the H's", were all greedy. I corrected him, that they were ungrateful. "No, greedy." Regardless, Brenn is greedy. I had not put that together.
Hypocrisy, then, and a deep ignorance of self.
That's how Brenn justified cheating Kip. He justified cheating his nephews and niece because he was greedy. He justified cheating me because he manufactured an excuse that I was dishonest -- I was plotting, stupidly, to steal mom's house -- so Brenn imagined he could and should steal dad's house. I had to put that together. So he is sleazy and shameful -- but there it is. It's not stupidity and it's not craftiness. It's willful evil.
At that same conversation, Brenn was saying that the idea of giving my father's grandkids an inheritance was "ridiculous." His reasoning was not sound -- dad was senile, and our grandfather had not left anything to the grandkids -- but I did not argue. First, because I no longer like to argue, and second because I recognized a malevolent situation.
The thing I am ashamed of, and philosophical about, is that I did the calculation. Three sons, instead of three sons and four grandkids -- my "share" would be about equal either way, so my own son was taken care of -- and what I would allot to my mother. In other words, I wasn't looking out for my other brother's kids. My instant calculation was that Kip had drained his mother's resources for so long, for so much, that it more than equaled out. (I had planned on my mother's assets -- her house -- going to the grandkids -- but that's another story, possibly uglier.) No harm done, except in the end to my self respect.
All of us ended up cheated. None of us deserved to be robbed, but none of us deserved an inheritance -- least of all the betrayer. I'm philosophical about it, because none of us deserve anything, for all that our father wanted, ultimately, to be a blessing to us.
That's Brenn's biggest betrayal. He is of course a coward. He ran away, and would never dare meet any of his family again. Given the magnitude of his crime, fear is appropriate. He is a thief, taking and keeping what is not his. He is a betrayer, of his mother, his brothers, his nephews and niece -- most, of his father, who trusted him.
His infantile sentimentality, his blackmail and threats, his need to control -- in his fifties he married a teenager -- in part that's a response to the harm my father did to him. That he chose to harm others rather than examine himself -- well, my response to the abuse was to lose my ability to trust. Of these two psychopathies, I'd take mine. I've been hated, but only a few times with just cause.
There is nothing to say against his wife. She was just a little teenager who took the chance she was given -- get to live with money in America. Maybe she was complicit in the theft, but her debt would be to common decency, not to in-laws she met only a few times. Maybe she deserves what she got, and will never understand the cost.
When you're that much given over to depravity -- what does it take to be redeemed from it? Probably as much of a miracle as it would take for me to learn how to trust. Like Kip -- how to repay what he owes? So many cripples.
And if Brenn Ko were not a thief? And we got and divided the million dollars that he stole? Honestly, I have to suppose it would not be a blessing. The work that I have yet to do, I would neglect. The growth that this continuing betrayal has demanded would not have been spurred. The self-examination would have remained superficial, and my self-righteousness would degenerate into delusion. We've been talking about how that happens.
It must be obvious that I could say many crushing truths about my brother Brenn -- liar, pervert -- so true and so ugly that his response could be only hatred, more hatred. I have nothing to fear from him. He has done all the evil to most of his family that he can. He is a bad son, and has only the power to further harm his mother, but if he does, he will die of pancreatic cancer within not many months. Other than that, I don't know what deserved anguish is coming his way. No, actually I do -- there will be a sexual element to it.
I have said it only to two people, but it is the explanation, other than his personal corruption: Brenn has a demon. I saw it, years ago. It's not possession -- affiliation. He delved into that cheap sort of thing -- the fantasy of controlling others. This is why hating him would be futile, as well as ungodly. It would add to the evil his demon wants to flourish. His demon loves to do harm, and if it cannot harm us, it will turn, even more, upon him.
He will not believe he is evil because he thinks being sentimental is the same as being good.
It has to count for something, this idea of 'brother'. It's always only meant bitterness to me. We can let hatred, resentment, obsession, unforgiveness, rule us. The time has not arrived, but I have to trust that it will, when I can say in my heart, with honesty, that my abusive brothers have been forgiven.
So there he is, my shameful and bizarre eldest brother, spending stolen money on travel and boats and toys and other such trash. Every time he buys something, he is a thief. Every time he remembers the past, he is a coward. Every time he touches his wife, he is a betrayer.
The appropriate response to this must be that of Joseph. We can rule only ourselves, if we do. The blessing that was stolen from my father, can be returned, by me. The price of being good is giving up our craving for justice.
J
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