When my mother had a recent health scare, I thought it might be the end for us. When she passes away I will, in essence, be an orphan.
At least that’s the way I have chosen to view it. For though I have 3 1/2 siblings, all of them have abandoned ship on me over the years. Some with very good reason; another I still am not sure why.
This isn’t supposed to incur anyone’s pity. This is just life. Since the estrangement of 2 1/2 and the death of one, I have had many of my readers and friends tell me their similar tales of dysfunction in the family unit. I am hardly alone.
I like to kid myself now and then that things would have been different if my oldest brother or my father hadn’t died so young. And perhaps things would have been different. My father, of course, was the patriarch of the family. When he died at 57 years of age, there was no one to take the role of the male lead in our little family play.
The obvious choice would have been Jon, who was the oldest of we four boys. But as I’ve shared, he left us unexpectedly when he was just 24 and I 14. It was devastating to the family and to me in particular. He was my idol and to a wide eyed 14 year old, bigger than life itself.
When he died, I got a small peek into the family future. It was at my brother’s wake that the gauntlet was thrown down by my next eldest brother. He was on a land grab for Jon’s stuff. The target of his interest was Jon’s bike, a Schwinn Continental that Jon had let me take care of and which had in essence, become my bike. At the wake, Jeff said it was his and we had words. We almost had fisticuffs. My mother finally interceded and the bike was mine. But the die had already been cast as to how our relationship would play out years later.
In 1981 my father died. I was barely out of college and was about a month into my first job. It was not unexpected, but no matter what anyone tells you, you can never prepare for the eventual death of a family member. The grieving process is just the same, no matter what.
Suddenly, we were without any patriarch. My mother, God love her, is an extremely strong willed woman. But she couldn’t do both jobs forever. While my father was sick she was the matriarch and patriarch.
With the passing of my father, however, there was no successor as patriarch. Jon would have been the obvious choice and I would have surrendered my sword to him in an instant.
But Jeff? Not a prayer. After finishing college and starting my own life, I didn’t find him any more capable of heading a family than I. For me, birthright meant nothing. You earned the respect, it wasn’t just handed to you on a silver platter.
Still, I loved my brother. And for a time I fell into the fold and tried to respect his position as the oldest male left in the George Zerr clan. Though things looked peaceful on the surface, I was not at all settled on the issue. Every time I tried to become my own man, my efforts were stymied. The music I wanted to perform in the band wasn’t what the band did, I was told, and I was supposed to stay married to a girl I met in high school who was a complete stranger to me. And it seemed, I was supposed to live my entire life in Renton until one day they buried my bored stiff ass at Greenwood.
This wasn’t the life for me. As you’ll see in my memoirs, the tipping point came at the Bunkhouse Tavern in Renton on New Year’s Eve 1984. I knew my life wasn’t meant to be like this. I knew I wouldn’t be spending another New Year’s in a seedy bar with my brothers and my sisters-in-law and my then wife.
And I didn’t. Once I started to run my own show, all hell broke loose. I was ostracized. Recently, a niece of mine tried to tell me that I don’t know the whole story. Well, I do. I was there and she was six years old. I know she’s been spoon fed a lot of propaganda, but again, I witnessed the whole mess unfold.
To cut to the chase, we haven’t spoken since 1984. This tale is even a bit stranger because we were all in the same club together, the Seafair Pirates, for the next six years. And we never acknowledged each other’s existence in a group of 30 men or spoke during that entire time. Talk about dysfunctional.
Which leads me to “half time.” I found out some years ago that there was another supposed brother who was my father’s son, but not my mother’s. I took it all at face value back then. Supposedly, there was iron clad proof.
I even visited him a time or two. But there was no brotherly connection. Even if there was some DNA shot across some woman’s welcoming bow some years ago, there wasn’t any history of being brothers. I’m a big nurture not nature kind of guy, so it slowly became apparent that this wasn’t going to lead anywhere. We were like night and day.
Finally, he started preaching to me as well, and well, there went another brother. If I couldn’t put up with the BS of two biological siblings, why would I take the crap of someone who is basically a total stranger to me?
So, I will be eventually be an orphan. I have tried on several occasions to repair the bridges that were broken. But to no avail. Such is life. I have learned a hard lesson that I can’t control what others do. I only have control over myself. And at one time, I didn’t even have that because I let my siblings have control of me instead.
Somewhere out there, I think my brother Jon and my dad are pretty proud of me. The youngest of four grew up to become a man. Even though others still wanted him to be that little boy growing up in Renton.
Out on the Treasure Coast, sailing solo through the past on a self-made boat,
– Robb