alcoholism

Knowing the Value of Something…

/ Marlo / 1 Comment

December 31 is my brother’s birthday, and in honor of him I decided to write. Back in February, I started the process to become certified to teach in the state of CT. Although I have taught in private schools and college, I still have quite a bit of work that is expected of me, 18 credits, a US History course and passing the Praxis test. My first class was in June and I took three this fall. Be grateful that you didn’t have to experience my whiny self, figuring out the details of how to become certified. Let me tell you, I whined a lot, even cried.

What I want to talk about is the transcripts. I had to purchase and send my transcripts to the state and to every college that I planned to take a class at. I had a paper copy of my graduate school transcript sent to my house. When I opened it, I gloated, felt proud of myself and gave my own self a pat on the back. I graduated with a 3.82 GPA. However, I did not have a transcript from my undergraduate school sent to my house. I am not sure of my reasoning but it will become clear, and maybe, in the end, it really doesn’t matter. When I opened the email to see my transcript, my jaw dropped. Um yeah, I am not even sure where to start.

I created a story about myself. This story I thought was a truth, until this past summer, when I realized it is not. It is easy to forget things that are hard. I am not sure how many of you know how difficult my undergraduate experience was, especially in the beginning.

The story that I remembered about myself is that I only failed a couple of classes and got a couple of D’s at UCONN. But the truth is I got like ten or more D’s AND failed classes in my five years at UCONN. After seeing my transcript, this past Spring, I was left kind of speechless. If I could paint my cheeks red I would. I was so embarrassed and I had to share this information, again! My grades were terrible!

I would like to back track a bit. Because in reality why am I embarrassed? A lot happened but my worth is more than a grade. As I was looking for a photograph to share in this post I found this from my brother. It appeared like a kiss from above.

Considering that I wanted to honor my brother today, he in turn is honoring me and asking me to honor myself. I love you Joe.

In my freshman year, I failed two classes and got at least one D. I can come up with so many reasons as to why, but is it worth writing it down? I wasn’t prepared, I didn’t care, I partied too hard, I was working multiple jobs and on and on. I was the only Latina in my dorm. It was the first year they stopped allowing kegs in the dorms and I lived in an area that was called the Jungle at UCONN. That name speaks for itself.

My required classes were a series of unfortunate events. My Astronomy professor liked to stand with his foot on the chair in his cheesy track suit, basically putting his crotch in my face, eventually I moved to the back of the huge lecture hall. I barely passed the class. My History professor gave me a D- minus on my first paper of the class. I wrote about the men, in All Quiet on the Western Front, as creating a force together. He wrote on my paper, “This is not Star Wars” and didn’t offer to help me correct my paper. My Philosophy teacher refused to work with me, he told me that some people just don’t get that part of his class and pushed me out the door. My drawing teacher made fun, commented and pushed and poked at me. He was relentless, eventually I stopped going. To be fair, I had a handful of amazing art professors that helped make me the person I am today. The only thing I truly remember for any of the required classes was an anthology of British writers from the 19th Century for an English class.

It only took me five years, but I did graduate. A lot worked against me but I was bigger than all of it. I started my sophomore year of college with my mouth wired shut. I was in a terrible car accident that I caused, in which I survived with only a broken jaw and thankfully no one else was hurt. Although, there was much pain for me and my mom and my family, something huge happened because of that accident. I squeaked out of the claws of alcoholism and never looked back. My jaw reminds me every day of that accident.

I was 18, just a baby. It took me a couple of years to be accepted into the art school at UCONN. Eventually, I found my way and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts with a focus in photography. I finished my education with a Master’s in Fine Arts also with a focus in photography at University of Hartford, Hartford Art School.

I have created this blog for my kids. I want them to know that some things in life don’t come easy. Sometimes they are so hard we forget the hard part for a reason. A grade or GPA does not define a person, or me or my worth.

With my grandmother Rena, and my mother, Pam, who looks like a baby herself here in this picture, at my high school graduation. The photograph itself is a bit mistreated, I did not alter it. There is no picture of my graduation from UCONN.

Joe, I owe you this…

/ Marlo / 3 Comments

I feel like a dog rooting around in circles and I can’t find my spot. These last few weeks have been very hard for me. My mind is filled with sadness, loneliness, regret, anger, guilt and I guess all of this is called grief. By the way, regular life won’t let me be, I keep bursting into tears wherever, whenever. The night I came back from Florida Adoni got into bed with me and asked me “how long are you going to be like this?”

The week of my wedding, 2004.

Joe’s death slammed this internal discussion right up against my face. Thoughts about decisions we made or didn’t are going around and around. My brother and I grew up latch key kids living in a one parent household with an estranged father. Our lives were not easy but we were loved. We started on the same path of alcohol together, that was easy.

My friend’s son is searching for a job and she was sharing the details. In which I said (screamed inside) don’t let him get a job at a restaurant! That was fear speaking out loud. I can blame many things, mostly adults not adulting. But here is the reality, at 15 years of age I was already drinking and when I started working, I drank there too. Thanks to the adult bartender/ friend at the restaurant she said “Here ya go, wink wink…a coke with a little something special”. I could have said no, but I didn’t nor did my friends. There were three of us working there together, my best friends from highschool. We made really good money bussing tables, and learned a lot about the life of adults mixed in with alcohol. Was it good times, maybe. We played hard.

I am 15 here, do I look 15? My mom is cutting the tag off my uniform. I am starting my first job at a restaurant. Beautiful family moment.

I am sticking to the discussion of alcohol for awhile as I mourn the passing of my brother. His passing is because of his addiction and his disease- alcoholism. My childhood friend recently said I was living proof that God exists. What does one do with that statement? I cried. I am searching for all the reasons of why this statement is true. I love myself and it took me a long time to get here. But I have never thought of myself as extra special, or even regular special, just Marlo. But I know this to be true, I am a survivor in more ways than most people know.

We met in middle school, 18 years old here. My best girl friends who bussed tables with me.

Fast forward three years and I am 18, it is summer time and I am partying like no other. I am also blacking out, like a lot. After I had moved on to bussing tables at a fancy restaurant called Apricots in Farmington, CT. It was the late 80’s, and my eyes got peeled wide open. I have finished my freshman year of college, unremarkable. My history professor marked my essay with a D on “All Quiet on the Western Front”. I wrote about a force the main characters had developed together to which he commented,”this is not Star Wars”. I failed my communications class in my major and failed my Art history class. That year there was a program that followed freshman, I was one of them. Meaning I had the dean on my side all year. At a school with thousands of students I received extra attention. Yet my first year was terrible. I partied the entire time, worked 2 jobs and failed classes all while living on campus. Meanwhile my brother is becoming his best athletic self in his Junior and senior year. When I think about it he was a 3 season athlete and in great shape.

My graduation from high school, 1987.

So back to my summer, and I am drinking, and having a grand time. And as luck would have it, I fall asleep at the wheel. Driving while intoxicated, I totaled my car and my face. I broke my jaw on the steering wheel. I did not hurt anyone, just myself. Literally my life changed or I decided to change my life. I was one of the first in my family to attend a four year college. My sophomore year was different, I spent that year cleaning up the mess I had made the year before. I spent 6 weeks of my sophomore fall semester with my jaw wired shut. I also stopped working at the restaurant. One of my greatest accomplishments is that I eventually earned my BFA and my MFA.

Back to the present, when I returned home from Florida, after watching my brother exit this world, I had hard a time sleeping as one can imagine. I already grind my teeth, thanks to genes and a broken jaw. I woke having had a terrible dream and my ears hurt as my mouth spent the night grinding the shit out of my head. My jaw is my life long punishment for my car accident, my life changed that day. But see, that is the point, I changed my habits and the rest of my life is history. My life is still happening-I am Still HERE! My brother however had multiple “opportunities” to lay claim to a life changing moment and he never did, as far as I know. I can’t tell you how many accidents and injuries my brother sustained in his life time, not to mention the things he did to his body on purpose, nipple rings, tongue ring, tattoos and even branding on the back of each calf.

He made a trip to Florida in 1991. He sent me a postcard that I had tucked away in an album. Makes sense that this picture is from that trip. He was a great wrestler, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.

His energy was amazing and infectious, always the life of the party. Right up until his death he was trying to go somewhere. We have been told stories of Joe as a baby, he rocked his crib all over the room, pulling down curtains, locking himself in the room and causing much havoc. My parents nailed his crib to the floor, he rocked the crib loose. So they ditched the crib and let him sleep on a mattress. All my brother’s life he has rocked to soothe himself, wherever there was a rocking chair he claimed it. He even rocked while standing or jiggled his leg while sitting. In his last hours, he really wanted to bolt from the bed. In an effort to calm him (on top of calming medicine and morphine) I rubbed in between his eyebrows and I rocked and jiggled his bed. After he seemed calm, I sat down, looked at my mother then him and that was it, he took his last breaths. I will never forget this.

Joey was 2 years old in the pictures of him in the crib. Maybe he is 3 in the one of him in front of the Christmas tree.

Joe, I am so sorry if you ever felt ashamed living the life that you lived, one because I didn’t accept it and two you knew it. I begged you to move to AZ with me, hoping you would see the light, make a change. And then it appeared like I left you there when I moved on. I realize I never looked back to bring you along with me. I realize that we had been doing so much of our lives together that the year I left AZ for grad school, was also the year that I started the next chapter of my life without you. This was totally a normal part of life, right? But when I look back and think about our entangled web I feel an immense amount of guilt. The sadness is overwhelming as I think about the years that have passed by. As I could only spend short amounts of time with you. Good times yes, but they were so hard for me as I wasn’t living in the way that you were, you were living a non stop party and eventually addiction. I know you tried to change, tried rehab and just couldn’t make it work. Always, I couldn’t wait to see you and then I couldn’t wait to leave. I wanted you around my family on my terms and you arrived on yours. But you must know we loved you all the same.

Adoni, my son, with Uncle Joe, 2011.
“jump a froggy, JUMP!”
Adoni was 4.

Losing My Religion

/ Marlo / 4 Comments

First I will preface this by saying I was baptized but it ends there, my faith is not based in an institution or tradition.

“R.E.M. ‘s hit song came out in 1991. “Losing my religion” is actually an old southern expression for being at the end of one’s rope, and the moment when politeness gives way to anger. But if you were missing that key detail, you’d think that lead singer Stipe’s vague imagery was clearly a comment on the Judeo-Christian tradition.” If I wanted to project…. the words to this song make it easy, and my brother and his life, and my life. Watch the video, listen to the words of the song and have a good cry. That is what happened to me this morning, I turned on the radio in the car and this song was on, I lost it. The coincidences of life are stunning. The video is linked below.

https://youtu.be/xwtdhWltSIg

Earlier this week trying to be present with my brother, I asked him if he wanted to listen to some music and he says sure and lists these groups, The B’52’s, R.E.M. and Jane’s Addiction. We, together loved these groups and their songs. I haven’t heard R.E.M. in years, until this morning. I play Dance this Mess Around from B’52’s, he actually bobbed his head for a few and we don’t even get to finish the song as his needs, the reason of why he is in the hospital, take over. I am in Florida and my brother is in ICU and has been since last Friday. Yesterday, unexpectedly as these things are never expected, the doctor tells me to my face, there is nothing else, medically, they can do for Joe. He is dying- my words. I won’t list all of what is wrong but all of it is because of alcoholism, which has caused liver failure. The sweetness is all I can see in my brother’s face and eyes even though he is in the most terrible of physical condition.

So how does one process being told “this is it”? I am numb. He knows, that yes, it is true, this is his last life. Time to go home Mr. Kitty with multiple nine lives. Your last life has been lived. My heart is broken. Joe signed his DNR papers today and he began the process of Hospice. As I write this he is being moved to “in hospital” Hospice care. Our mother also signed the papers. Do you hear me…his mother, our mother signed Hospice papers for her son.

My husband, Luis, my boys, my cousin’s boys and of course my brother in the back being goofy. Adoni’s face is for the fact that his face was literally in my husband’s armpit. 2019.

I stayed at my cousin’s last night, my mother needed some privacy. Our conversation went like this. We talk about many things, mostly our boys and how we are raising them. All our boys are in the picture above. We talk about my brother becoming the poster boy for alcoholism. I cry. We talk about the fact …this hurts too- she and my best friend both lost their brothers when we were young. My childhood best friend’s brother died in 1991, same year the R.E.M. song came out. My cousin died when we were senior’s in higschool, 1987. Why they each died is tragic and I can write about later. RIP, cousin Alan and family friend, Jared. We talk about the finality of her brother’s death and my friend’s brother’s death. It isn’t new information about how difficult these years have been for me concerning my brother. Their brothers are dead and mine is alive and stuck in addiction. It has been hard raising a family without my brother, without their uncle, without his brother in law, only for Joe to be present for little fleeting moments and always under the influence of alcohol. I didn’t loose my brother physically but I lost him emotionally to alcoholism years ago.

My brother and Adoni in Dominican Republic. My brother is a kid at heart. 2009

The nurse in the ICU today wanted to give me a hug so I let her (um Covid-19) and I sobbed. We talked about generational alcoholism. She stressed and emphasized self care and showing my children, my boys, what self care is. Which brings me back to my conversation with my cousin last night. Our boys are 12 and 14, they are coming of age. They need to know better what self-care is and how to do it correctly. Learn to recognize when there is something wrong and deal with it as negative self soothing is not the answer. I want my boys to know it is ok to be vulnerable in manhood.

The R.E.M. video shows the lead singer as vulnerable, in fact all the men and boys in the video are vulnerable. This week we have seen my brother’s vulnerability, us 3 women he cares for the most, his girlfriend, me and his mother. Allowing us to see him in the condition that he is in, seeing his acceptance of his fate, he said to me, “I did this to myself”, and him signing the Hospice papers has to be the bravest and most painful task he has ever had to do in his life.

Maybe 1989. Joe with our maternal grandmother, Rena. He loved her dearly. I shot this photograph at the beginning of my photographic education/career.

Joe, Rio, I mean Joe…

/ Marlo / 9 Comments

I called my dear childhood friend this morning to tell her that my brother is in the ICU and per usual, especially when I am angry, I say my son’s name and not my brother’s. As soon as Rio’s personality developed or maybe my age had something to do with it, my brother Joe’s name and Rio’s name became interchangeable. I would be talking to my brother and call him Rio right to his face. And when I was angry or frustrated with Rio I would call him Joe.

The hard part for me was Rio’s disdain at being called Joe. Rio is more mature now, 14, so it does not land for him the way it once did. But a few years back when the inter change of names flew out of my mouth regularly, Rio was adamant, “Mom stop calling me his name!” Incredulously, “How could you, I am nothing like Uncle Joe!” That hurt me, I know as my adult self what he really meant to say, but his kid self would hurl that at me just as regularly as I called him Joe and Joe, Rio.

Rio, my husband-Luis, my brother-Joe,
2019, he was in CT for our paternal grandmother’s funeral.

My brother is an alcoholic and he is losing his last battle with alcoholism. It is the last stand at the ok corral. As I write this I am on a plane headed to Florida, mask on, plane packed, even with alternating seats. I am shocked. I definitely have kept to my small bubble of quarantine. My brother is in ICU, and it doesn’t look good, so of course I am on a plane. Here is the heavy part, he may not even survive through his withdrawal. They said “if “ he survives withdrawal. This is the first time I have heard that. So if I can hold his hand during his withdrawal, let him know how much I love him, I will. My brother Joe, with more than nine lives, is this your last life ?

Alcoholism is a disease and there is no cure for my brother. When I was convalescing after my surgery of a colon resection because of a cancerous tumor, Joe, through tears, said I had it easy, because everyone recognized my disease. He said the world does not recognize his disease. In a certain way I felt he passed the buck and wasn’t taking any ownership of his own life. But what I really heard loud and clear was this, I am in pain, I am sad, I have no control and I can’t help myself, I need help but I really don’t want it. I don’t have the will power even though I say I do, when will this all end?

Me and my brother in California around 1994. He came with me to see my work in an exhibition. This photograph was taken in a live art piece, inside of a camper, dress up and get your picture taken. We were living together in Arizona.

Addiction is trauma soothing, I can’t pick from Joe’s traumas, our traumas and tell you which one did him in? No, but as we go through this moment and feel pain about this battle the people closest to him are pointing fingers and blaming this trauma and that trauma. Joe will be 50 years old December 31, 2020. When is he old enough to own his own shit? I know I can’t fix or cure my brother’s disease as much as we all have tried. My brother has been in charge ….since a long time ago.

Joey and my mom. Mid/late 70’s.

Since my brother left Arizona in the early 2000’s and moved closer to our mother, he has been in and out of hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, on his death bed, super healthy, come clean only to say “they said I could drink once in a while” and then we wouldn’t hear from him and he was gone again. In his late teens he was flown home in an emergency situation and diagnosed with pancreatitis. I feel like that moment directed his life journey, it was set before him and out of anyone’s control, most importantly his.

My brother asked that I not announce his private matters publicly. I am going against his wishes as he deserves better, he deserves a world wide recognition of the beautiful person he is, and also his pain and suffering. Joe, the young boy I knew the best, who reminds me so much of my innocent son Rio, deserves a full lived and loving life. And since you won’t listen to any of us, I am telling you here, I love you Joe, the little boy in you and the man in you.