My mother was dying.

That was the crux of the situation on a day in early October when I received a phone call from a social worker at one of the hospitals in the town where my mother lives. She was in critical condition, in really bad shape and struggling with pneumonia, and the person she’d designated as her health care proxy didn’t want to do it, so they were calling me to find out if there was anyone else for the job. When I asked the doctor about getting the state to become her proxy instead, I was warned it was an arduous process and by the time that got set up, she may be gone anyway. Since there isn’t anyone else for the job, really, I got railroaded into agreeing to be my estranged mother’s health care proxy, and had to make decisions that would determine her life and/or death should it come to that. In case you’re wondering, yes, that has absolutely been as triggering and painful as it sounds. Repeatedly, I emphasized that I did not want her to know of my involvement at all; it’s documented as such in her paperwork. I’ve had two wars going on at once in my life this fall/winter, the war in Israel and a much more personal one.

But wait! There’s more!

Not only did the hospital social worker inform me of my mother’s plight, she advised me that my brother was also in the hospital — a different one — where he at this point was stable healthwise but was awaiting residential placement. At the time of these original calls, my brother was the lesser concern because unfortunately, that’s how the residential placement system works around here. He at least had shelter and support at the hospital and would eventually be able to get permanent placement; my mother, meanwhile, was supposedly on her deathbed. That took precedence with my emotions for weeks.

As the weeks went by and I stopped receiving updates, I had to start calling them to follow up. By late October, my mother was stabilizing but still not doing well. I asked that they check with the social worker handling my brother’s case, asking for an update, but didn’t hear back. More weeks went by; when I called again the week of Thanksgiving, I was advised that my mother had recovered enough to be discharged back to the nursing home where she’d been staying before her hospitalization. Apparently, that had happened on November 2, nearly three weeks earlier! Thanks for the heads up, people. I had battled my emotions and tried to process the “end” of it all, prepare myself for it, all to end up right back where we were before. I could’ve spared myself the anguish and just never answered the hospital’s first phone call. The woman is going to live forever just to spite me at this point.

As annoying as all of that is, to say the least, the update that I finally got about my brother was worse. After some time of supposedly being cooperative and on board with getting residential placement (which I have to say would have been unusual for him), apparently something had set him off and he had decided to leave the hospital against medical advice (much more par for the course). The social worker mentioned some sort of court date and apparently he’s been coming and going a lot at the local DSS office.

So, to the best of my limited knowledge, my brother is now homeless, and surely off his meds, and for all I know he is without anyone to help him or make sure he has what he needs or make sure he’s okay. Cue immediate backsliding on my part, feeling like an utter failure and a horrible sister. Even if I wanted to go down there to try to find him, I wouldn’t know where to look. He had a birthday at the end of November, and I don’t know if he was even in a frame of mind to be aware enough of the date. Did he know it was his birthday, and did he spend it alone and cold? The thought breaks my heart.

For so much of my life, I lived in my brother’s shadow. My name may as well have been “Nick’s sister” because that was the crux of my identity. I didn’t know who I was without him. It took a lot of hard work and a lot of time in therapy to figure out how to find myself, as my own person. I’d made great gains, huge progress, with that. Then I get this news, and immediately I backslide into being six years old again, born and raised to be my older brother’s keeper, a little mother duck whose duckling has now gone missing, and I can’t help him this time.

I’ve needed a lot of extra reminders from friends, and my therapist, in these last couple weeks, to help me remember that it isn’t my job to help him, and even if I were able to find him and offer help, that doesn’t mean he would accept it from me (or anyone else, for that matter). My therapist also reminded me that I’ve been catastrophizing; I’ve been imagining the worst, but he may be better off than I’m thinking he is. My brother can be irascible and irrational, but he has also had an uncanny ability to make friends that I’ve never mastered. It’s possible there are people helping him. I’ve also needed help to remember that I’m not the one who failed him; the system failed him, and our parents failed him. Certainly, in truth, they failed us both.

This whole situation is a stark example of the fact that no matter how much progress we might make in healing, there are always going to be moments of backsliding, of our old instincts rearing back up. I’m desperately sad for him in present tense, in a more objective sense; meanwhile, though, the childhood version of me inside my head is the one that has become paralyzed with fear and pain and guilt for him, and she’s been driving the bus for the last couple weeks now. I haven’t been able to get her out of the driver’s seat without a lot of help. Trauma recovery is not a linear process.

Long story short (too late!), I’m carrying around a lot of heavy shit these days, more so than usual. My posts have gotten a little less frequent because it’s been a lot to work through, and not a lot of energy has been left for writing lately. Prayers and positive thoughts and all that jazz would be much appreciated — not just for me, but for my brother, too. Wherever he is…I hope he can somehow sense that he is loved, even from a place where we can’t reach each other right now.