uncle

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.

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.