Forward

Forward

 

I enjoy writing—A LOT!— but this is one story I never intended to write.  In fact, I would give almost anything in the world for it to have had a different ending.

But it didn’t…….

Akin to a runaway train, the thing had a mind all its own and no amount of continuously pumping the brakes could ever derail it or stop it from running amok.

Life happened as it is wont to do, and my brother Fran chose to get up one ordinary morning in the autumn of 1995 and go out and voluntarily die an early and untimely death.  I was decidedly close to my older brother and happened to have a unique perspective as his life–at first very slowly, but then with ever-increasing rapidity and wantonness–lost its true compass setting and tumbled recklessly out of control.  I witnessed the early subtle warning signs that key facets of Fran’s life were creeping beyond normal, and of course I stood helplessly by later on and watched aghast as glaring warning signals indicating something was terribly amiss in my brother’s well-being became more and more common until becoming ubiquitous.

Ultimately Fran’s life moved like a Shakespearean tragedy to its ill-fated, violent conclusion, and it became a story that mushroomed in size over time and begged to be told.  I happened to have a close-up view to the hellish internal battle that consumed and tormented Fran for the better part of four years, and therefore I will be today’s storyteller.  But in the spirit of unvanquished mental health, let’s be one hundred percent honest here:  It certainly gives me no sense of pleasure or undue self-importance to crown myself with this unwanted role of narrator.

Yet I must also admit the task does give me an overriding sense of closure, inasmuch as the last three years of Fran’s life were like a hideous open wound–plainly visible to anyone on the outside who might be peering in, yet not clearly understood or appreciated by anyone.  I loved Fran very much and everlastingly will.  The two of us were exceptionally close after I achieved adulthood, and we lived only half a mile apart and spent considerable time together even after he later married, moved away, and started a family of his own.

The 1970s were a carefree, nostalgic decade that jointly filled our memory banks to overflowing, and the ‘80s which immediately followed were yet another half-score where Fran and I celebrated life to the fullest, created extravagant memories on an ongoing, virtually daily basis, and looked with unbridled optimism toward a future we shamefully took for granted and just knew would always be bright, promising, fun-filled…….and of course stretching off in the general direction of that distant horizon which heralded old age and, with it—a relaxing and inherently satisfying retirement for both of us, one surrounded by family members and loved ones and adorned with every other element indigenous to Shangri-La.

Moreover, the hours and days which loomed before us back then increasingly became our subservient slaves–meekly appearing on a regular basis from out of the blue, constantly available to us to be used and budgeted at our personal discretion, obedient indentured servants that could be ordered around on a whim…….as though life itself, with its myriad temptations and entrapments, was our own private fiefdom and we–and WE alone–wielded climactic control over each and every aspect of our daily sorties.

If only that were true, although certainly my brother and I weren’t the only two mortals on Earth guilty of thinking in such an arrogant and imperious manner….. 

Fran was Best Man at my raucous Silver Bay, Minnesota wedding to the comely Carla Warm in the summer of 1987, and I proudly agreed to be the godfather for his youngest son Jessie when said infant was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church at hometown Spring Valley, Minnesota in a winsome ceremony several years later.  Fran was busy raising a family of three boys by this point, but we still spent a lot of time together and shared abundant laughs and more than a few beers during those unforgettable halcyon days of the late 1980s, now long since passed and seemingly part of a distinctly different lifetime for me.

But as the ‘90s dawned and everyone started to inch cautiously forward into that nascent decade, circumstances started to change…..and a troubled stranger began to mysteriously yet inexorably sprout from the older family member I knew so well and dearly loved.  At first the changes were barely perceptible and not overly concerning, but as time wore on a frightening, unrecognizable persona bullied its way to the forefront of my brother’s body and gradually stole control of that body away from the person I grew up knowing and loving until—one day–this new guy residing within Fran’s skin was no longer Fran Blahnik at all, but rather an unrecognizable, unwelcome imposter masquerading as the older brother who also happened to be my best friend in an earlier, happier era.