1 crazy family

I got a call from my brother Jess the other day. It's happening again. The family curse. Call it manic depression, bi-polar, schizophrenia or whatever you want. He's got it.

My other brother, John had it too and killed himself a few years back. Said he didn't want to go through a lifetime of this shit. He killed himself the day after I called. John had had a nervous breakdown on a road trip he was taking to Connecticut from Colorado, where he had been attending college. Jess had to fly to Indiana to pick him up and help him finish the drive back to Connecticut. John was too paranoid and delusional to finish the drive himself. Once they got to Connecticut John got checked into the mental ward of the hospital and got medicated and then put into a day treatment program so they could monitor his medication and make sure he was stabilized enough. John was home a couple of days from the psych ward when I called. Jess answered the phone and I said, "So I'm just calling to say goodbye to you guys because I'm really bored so I've decided to kill myself." Like I said before, this thing Jess is now suffering with and John was then suffering with, was and is the family curse. Here I am bored, having a genuinely depressing Sunday but because I am a wise ass I'm not psychotically depressed. (I believe that my chronic need to be a wise ass has kept me alive during a life time of suicidal thoughts.) So I say that I'm going to kill myself because I think Jess might find it funny. I had just read a quote from the suicide note left by George Sanders , the actor, that said, "I've done everything, I've seen everything, I'm bored." Jess says to me, "Don't fuck around. John just tried killing himself this morning. I went out back and there he was with a rope around his neck trying to hang himself from the tree. I ran out there and yanked the rope down and pulled that branch off the tree." Jess intervened in time but the next day John snuck off with his medication and the medication my mother had because of her mental disorder. Someone found him dead in the woods by the railroad tracks. He had taken all the meds. I think that Jess has always blamed himself for John's death. He got religious after this; quotes the Bible all the time; Is kind of a freak about it. Oh and he gets into fights. I think that Jess can kick just about anyone's ass. Having had two older brothers to deal with gave him a lot of fighting experience and self confidence during altercations with other kids. Also he's into martial arts. Was on the Judo team in college and practices Tai Chai every morning in the park.

Anyway getting back to John. At his funeral my great Aunt Mary comes up to me and says, "What's with the people in your family? Your brother kills himself, your mother's in and out of mental hospitals all her life and your grandmother (who at this point had been dead for twenty-one years) went to church every day of her life." I was blown away by the comment about my grand mother. She died when I was eight years old and I remember going to church with her and visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City but I didn't know that she was a religious fanatic. She had a masters degree in education so you'd think she'd figure something out sans the religion but I guess Aunt Mary was saying she had the curse too. Great Aunt Mary's comment about my mom? Well at this point my mother had had three nervous breakdowns and spent at least a year and half of her life in mental hospitals. Like I said John was able to insure the death inducing potency of all the pills he had taken by supplementing his psych meds with my mothers psych meds. She would continue taking them until a year before she died, a year she spent in total psychotic hell as a result of going off her meds that culminated with her death due to lung cancer. Her favorite anti schizophrenic drug, the one she would never go without, came from cigarettes. She spent her final year babbling like a psycho bag lady. I didn't cry when she died. It was such a relief. I did cry when John died. So Jess called me. Says he's quit his job and is driving south. He's talking nonstop like my mother would when she was having a breakdown and has taken the religious component and spiced it up with a little martial arts blending together a little east meets west by quoting the bible while doing Tai Chi. He's quoting the bible and once he finishes a quote and you're able to get in a word edgewise he's got another one ready to counter whatever it is you've said. I'm at the airport now in Seattle where I live and waiting for a flight. This time it's my turn because I'm going to have to pick him up. Jess said that Jesus told him to first go to Charlotte. So I'm meeting Jess in Charlotte North Carolina. He left Brooklyn and headed south yesterday. I guess Jesus is his co-pilot because Jess said that he's been talking to Jesus every day and Jesus wants him to pick up where he left off, only this time he's not taking the peaceful route because Jess is quoting shit from the Bible. Today as we were talking on the phone I could tell by his breathing that when he said "To me belongth vengeance, and recompense their foot shall slide in due time, for the day of their calamity is at hand." he was practicing Tai Chi long form.