Inexplicable

I found out just before lunch today that my brother is in the hospital. He fell down a flight of stairs last night and landed on his face. He has skull fractures and other injuries. He's currently in Intensive Care in a hospital-induced coma. Nobody seems to know exactly what's gong to happen; the hospital people are telling my parents that it's a 'waiting game' at this point.

Alcohol was apparently a factor.

According to my parents, my brother had been drinking last night to the point that his wife told him to go sleep in the basement. He left angrily, slamming the basement door behind him. Then she heard him fall down the stairs. He was in pretty bad shape when she found him, I guess. Fortunately, they got him to the hospital pretty quickly.

There are a lot of feelings going through my head right now. I'm worried about my brother and his family, especially my nieces. I feel sorrow at the thought that I may not see him again, and I'm scared about what he may be like when I do see him. I'm feeling a little depressed and helpless and wishing there was something I could do besides pray for him and for the rest of the family.

But mixed in with all of that, there's another emotion that I wish I weren't feeling: anger.

There's a part of me that wishes I could just take him by the shoulders and shake him and say, "What the hell do you think you're doing?! You were clean and sober for two years, and you started drinking again for this? You stupid, selfish son of a b*tch. What gives you the right to put all of us through this? Even if you don't give a damn about your own life, don't you care about your kids? Your parents? Your brothers and your friends? Are you trying to get yourself killed? It was hard enough to lose Granny last Christmas, and we all knew it was her time to go. We're still not completely over that yet. Don't you dare make us bury you, too. Don't you dare make your kids have to grow up without their father like Brian's kids have to. Quit screwing around and wasting your life twelve ounces at a time. Grow up and be a man already."

Of course, that wouldn't change anything, wouldn't solve anything. He doesn't do well with confrontation. None of us really do. Such a conversation would just serve to get everyone more upset. As Neal A. Maxwell once said, "Letting off steam always produces more heat than light."

And as I look back over what I've just written, I realize that I'm the stupid, selfish one. I know that right now, my brother needs my love and kindness and faith and forgiveness. He's got more than enough anger in his life; he doesn't need mine, too. And yet, at this moment, that's what the darker part of me wants to give him. There's a part of me that hurts because this, to my mind, didn't need to happen. And I suppose that part of me wants him to know exactly how much it hurts.

I guess anger is as hard to let go of as alcohol is. And like a recovering alcoholic, I expect I'll be working on this for a long, long time—probably the rest of my life.

Loyal readers, if you would be so kind, please send prayers, hope, and healing thoughts our way. My brother, my family, and I will all need them in the coming days.