disowned: the once every decade event!

On 13 February, I called my brother Jeff to wish him "Happy Birthday". I got sent to his answering machine and never did get a call back from him. I then called our Mother, who mentioned she'd talked with Jeff 20 minutes before I called him and she relayed his family news.

My wife mentioned that Jeff screens his calls. I guess I've pissed him off again (don't know why though) and I'm frozen out again...

In the early 1990s, I got to brooding about how my father got into a pissing contest with both of his brothers. He didn't talk to Bob from 1971 to around 1988 or 1989; he never did talk to his brother Don and being dead, my Father sure can't now...

So, I was thinking that my brothers and I should get closer and at least tell each other the occasional "I'm fine, how are you"? Our other two brothers were good with this but when I wrote Jeff, I got a real ball buster of a reply. He basically said:

I live in [at the time, a micro sized state in New England] and you live in [a big mid west state]. We never see each other. If we weren't relatives, we were never have met [no shit?]. I'm very busy with my wife, our kids, her family [damn sure not his brothers or our families], my job and our church. I simply don't have the time to devote to a relationship with you." [I don't want a fucking relationship, I just want my next-to-youngest-brother back!"]

 It kind of reminds me of the joke popular in the US Navy (the 1800 community anyway) during the 1980s. The commanding officer of a ship is pissed off at another senior officer and sends a Naval message:

"FUCK YOU. STRONGLY WORDED LETTER FOLLOWS."

It doesn't seem quite as funny as it did 20 years or so ago but it still in funny (Navy funny).

I didn't respond but did tell me other two brothers. One brother had gotten a similar communication (I don't remember if it was a letter or just a phone call) and the other brother got the "FUCK YOU" impression from phone calls and letters that went unanswered.

Tuesday, 21 February 2006, I sent Jeff a letter. The first paragraph was a mei culpa in which I apologized for being a "bad brother" and for not paying enough attention to him. I figured the odds of him replying and they came up "he ain't replying".

So, I figured he'd get my letter at most a week after sending it (28 February 2006). If he replied immediately and giving the postal service a week to deliver, I should have gotten the response no later than today. (I didn't get any letter from my dear brother.) I'm going to be hopeful and give him until this coming Tuesday (14 March 2006) before I officially give up hope and officially let myself realize I've been disowned again...

So, why am I so upset about this?

He is family and we did grow up together. We had the same good times and probably many of the same bad times. We're blood...

There is a line in the "Farscape" movie "The Peacekeeper Wars" (which I saw on DVD this morning. John Crighton told another character something like "if you don't have family, you don't have anything" [or words to that effect]. I wonder if Jeff will ever figure this one out.

One of Jeff's daughters "claims" to be afraid of flying so when Jeff and younger daughter flew out to the West Coast to join the rest of us in a family birthday dinner, this girl didn't come out. Her Mother stayed behind to care for her. It sounded a little fishy; why not give the girl a tranquilizer and put her on a plane? Well, we've recently heard that "Mother" has been taking both of her daughters on long plane trips and I didn't get the impression that either girl was afraid of flying. (Come to think of it, Jeff's wife has never seemed happy to be around my other brothers and I and doesn't seem to like our wives either...)

Still, it bugs the shit out of me and I wish I could be reconciled with Jeff. I tried a decade ago and I tried less than a month ago and I don't have that many more decades left in me (given the average life expectancy for our blood line). Well, I tried and I can only hope for a change of heart at the distant end...