He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother

The road is long, with many a winding turns...I Love this song by the Hollies. I have listened to it many times and today I listen with a new ear. I hear it different because on August 6, my biological half brother Jay passed away. He has been sick off and on for the past few years but seemed to rally each time.

Jay and I agreed that what happened to us is not our fault. We were just innocent kids. We both could have done a better job of pursuing a relationship with the other. We chose not to and now I have to live with that.

Each of us has a choice to pursue relationships with others, even family, or not. But when someone dies, everything changes. This kind of loss cuts to the core of your soul, no matter the circumstances. And this ain’t my first rodeo.

For those of you who are new to my story, I grew up thinking Jay was my nephew and I was his “Aunt Dawnie” (just as I am to a whole clan of offspring.) I loved all of my nieces and nephews. I had a great time watching them grow up and I would even say I helped raise a few of them. I was the Aunt. I felt outside of the group of first cousins. They felt so much younger than me. But recent discoveries, uncovering more lies, has revealed they weren’t. There is only 2 years and two weeks difference between Jay and myself.

I should have been playing in the first cousin clan. Instead, I believed that I was their Aunt. Older and more mature. Believing to be the youngest of 5 children, adopted by a military family passing through Hawaii robbed me of SO many experiences with my blood family. Which is the core pain of this situation. They led me to believe I wasn’t their blood, their relation, and so even in the minor details I wasn’t really their blood Aunt, or family. Adopted into it all.

But that was a lie, a story placed on me, a role forced upon me without one consideration of how that would impact my future in times just like this. At the loss of my brother, my biological mother’s second child, following me and my crazy birth into this world. A boy I’d never really get to know. A man I’d never fully understand or connect with. And now a relationship I can never repair.

This folks, is the result of deceit, and lies, even for a “good and compassionate” reason. It was the easy route my family took not knowing the complex web they were weaving so long ago. I will struggle with this forever. I will always wonder what might have been. As the song says, “it is a long, long road from which there is no return...”, but all I or anyone can do is move forward, right?

R.I.P. Jay. I wish I could have shouldered your burdens more, but I pray that your soul is no longer heavy, my dear brother.