Sometimes All You Can Do is All You Can Do

I’m thinking here about the siblings issues we’ve talked about.  I asked about yours….let me tell you about mine. I have a brother who doesn’t speak to me or our sister. He simply wants nothing to do with us.  There was no big argument that set it off.  He just has issues…(I’m a therapist, how can I not  think this way?). His childhood basically sucked. Our father criticized him relentlessly,  and favored his girls. Lavished his girls. With love, affection, and material things.  I basked in my father’s attention, and had no time or interest in my brother, 6 years younger than I.  I have no happy memories of him at all and I’m sure its the same for him…he was just the pain in the butt little brother…

It never grew to more than that….Then  my father died when we were young adults and  my brother began to drift even further away…literally across the country…meanwhile I got older, and sick, and began to belatedly appreciate the importance of family. I tried reaching out to him so many times…verbally, letters, sending photos of his neice and nephew who he has no interest in….but it was too late. He told someone that he really just has nothing in common with me…At first I thought that was ridiculous ! Nothing in common? We had the same parents! We grew up together.

But then I thought about it some more and realized that wasn’t true at all. We did not grow up together. We never connected or bonded. We experienced our childhoods and our parents entirely differently.  Too late, I grieve for the relationshp I could have fostered with my little brother. I envy women with brothers now. I am so pleased that my son and daughter are so close.  I grieve for what never was with my brother, and also for what never will be. He just doesn’t want it.  So as much as I yearn for it as a woman, and believe in it as a therapist, the reality is we can’t always mend relationships. Or in this case, start one. Sometimes all you can do…is all you can do…