continuing the fall down the rabbit hole (my crazy brother Kirt)

Without my crazy brother's letters coming in the mail every couple of weeks my life was far less interesting. I went back to my daily routine;fixing meals, wiping bums and cleaning peanut butter finger-paint off the kitchen table. It felt good to be free from the mega drama and back to focusing on my family. Then, I got another call from my mother.

"I got a visit from Kirt's in-laws today." She announced. "Kirt packed up his family and moved. No body knows where. I guess he told his in-laws that they'd never see their grandson again and took off." Her words and tone draw me in like a moth going toward the flame.

"Well I guess you had to know that was coming. It was obvious from his first novel-sized letter he'd gone completely nuts and mental illness doesn't usually get better when left untreated. He's probably finally found a cult that would accept him and ran off to buy some 'Nikes' and join." My mother stifles a laugh, then scolds me unconvincingly. I don't know what answers she was looking for with me. I didn't know where Kirt ran off to anymore than the next person. Kirt's in-laws seemed to know the most, and that wasn't much, they just kept talking about how terrified they were that my brother was going to shoot up their house or something.

Weeks past and my mother was absolutely beside herself not knowing where crazy Kirt was. I tried to point out that since he had already been living in a different state and had vowed to never see any of us in person again that things weren't really any different. But of course, being the anxiety-ridden drama queen that she is she just couldn't handle not knowing his exact location.

Then one day my mother received an interesting phone-call. A routine back-ground check traced my brother back to my parents. Instead of getting information on Kirt's character however, the poor investigator got a frantic mother begging for information, any information. Unable to stand my mother's plea, the lady divulged my brother's new address in Oregon. My mother saw this as an answer to her prayer and a second chance.

She called me right after getting off the phone with the investigator. She was ranting about her plans to contact Kirt in a "non-threatening" manner. As if there is anything thats considered non-threatening to a sckitzo. A person that crazy would be suspicious over a pony and bunny card. Here we go again. I thought.

Kirt was absolutely furious he'd been found. He called my mother immediately after receiving her card, demanding to know how she'd found him. He figured he'd covered every track. He'd studied diligently, his TV crime dramas, he left no internet trail. He'd done everything except change his name, all so the evil Mormons couldn't track them down and kill them. And yet, his sixty-something year-old mother who doesn't even know how to run her DVD player had found him within a matter of weeks. How humiliating. Well, in short my mother assured him she would not give out her information and she would not contact him again.

A few short months later, my father was in the hospital with stomach cancer. My mother figured Kirt should know...or rather she wanted him to know. that's when she received the six-page single-spaced letter.

Kirt was sure that she'd made up my father's illness in order to get him to come home and get him back under her control. Then he sends his advice to my father just in case he really was sick, then he lashes out at my mother again for making this crap up. After that, he talks of his wife's illnesses, which are never diagnosed or even described in any way that makes sense. He lets us all know that when he made the decision to disappear he made his peace with the fact that he'd never even know when someone in the family passed away. He justifies his leaving and not returning under any circumstance because he was faced with death and he chose to protect his family. The letter goes on to chastise my mother for knowing that they were sick and in danger and not even "giving a damn about it". He comes up with some crazy story about Mormons drowning a lady on his mission because she didn't pay a debt. He accuses me of stalking him and says that if he sees anyone that even remotly looks like me near his house he'll call the police. Then he closes the letter with some nice blasphemy, wishes my mother and me to burn in hell for our terrible crimes against him, and says goodbye. For good. This time. And promises to disappear better.

In all honesty, I wish there was something we could do to get my brother some professional help. Unfortunately unless he breaks the law, I think there's nothing that can be done. We laugh about it because it releases the emotion without drowning us in the sorrow. I pray that some day, Kirt and his family, especially his young son get the help they need.