My big brother went missing last month

I received a text message from the woman who operated his group home. It was late at night, I was laying in bed with my two younger ones. Z jabbing me in the back with his feet, C suckling on her bottle. I was watching Vivarium on Netflix from my phone with the volume as soft as possible  like any other night. I don’t receive text messages often. Half the time the ones I do are from an automated bot reminding me of an upcoming appointment or 50% off shipping. A new merchandise drop from a company I only gave my number to to save 10% during Christmas. Have I bought anything since? No. But I don’t opt out because hearing the alert tone, seeing the display of an unread message makes me feel a little less alone at times. There’s someone out there trying to reach me…even if it’s just a computer.

It was an unsaved number with an area code from the larger city north of here. They were asking if I had seen my brother. I hadn’t. We don’t see each other or talk much. Since mom died there has been little to nothing of him as she used to update me, always in a state of worry or annoyance. She’d complain when he was constantly calling her, asking her for something. When he wasn’t trying to reach her she’d panic, as it meant he was off his meds or using. It might mean nobody else knew where he was. One time, not long after his diagnosis, he took off to LA and was picked up on HollyWood BLVD for “acting strange”. I always thought, the more power to him. Let him live his life. She was always so terrified for his well being.

This number asked if I had seen him. I hadn’t. It had been months since he called me last at 1am in a psychotic episode. But JJ had. At the grocery store over a week prior. This number, this woman was the main care taker at his group home. We went back and forth a bit exchanging information in regards to where he might be. She even drove an hour down here the next day to knock on the door of a house i knew he frequently hung out at. We hadn’t heard anything from anyone we tried to reach. She filed a missing persons report. I made a Facebook post. We located him…kind of.
He wanted to leave the home and not be contacted.

Yesterday I drove up there to get his things and sign his discharge papers. It made me sad. It’s something my mom would never do. But I can’t be her. I cannot exhaust myself the way she did for 30 years pooling together resources to get him the help he never wanted. She couldn’t accept who he was. She couldn’t accept that he would never be “normal.”
It was the drugs fault. It was the schizophrenias fault. It was the doctors fault during labor, convinced he needed oxygen. It was her fault, because he wasn’t breastfed.

It was no one’s fault. He is who he is.
A person experiencing their own unique life experience just like the rest of us.

She went to all the meetings, read all the books, but could never let go of being a co-dependent care taker because without it she felt like she had no purpose.
and it breaks me, to know how lost he is without her.

So I tracked him down and found him living in someone else’s car. He took his pocket knife, a couple changes of clothes, a tooth brush, his bowl of loose change. I asked him about his phone that’s been off for over a month. He didn’t ask me for anything, but I told him I’d like to go buy him one so I did along with some deodorant and a razor. Whether or not he uses it, I wanted him to feel cared about. That mom is gone but he still matters. He’s still deserving.

He seemed ok. Happier.
He’s 43, but never stopped being 13.

I know he won’t be around much longer.
We all have known that. Mom knew that. If it wasn’t for the cancer she would have out lived her first born son.

If this is what he wants, to feel free, to live with his hallucinations rather than zombifying himself with pills, if he wants to be homeless instead of having a roof over his head… then so be it.
He deserves to live the life he wants, the life he kept trying to get back to.

I’d rather him enjoy his life before the void catches him, instead of dragging it out trapped in an existence he hated.

Live and let live.

im thankful, however, that he at least now has my number. That I can now send him a message so he feels a little less lonely.