This year has started with a resounding ‘blah’. I’m sure that this has something to do with the difficult goals I set for myself. I always say, “When the going gets tough, the tough take a nap,” which is how I feel right now. So I decided to return to a subject about which I have thought, written, painted and photographed most of my life: my brother Mike. Mike is autistic, low functioning, and has never spoken. Today he is in a geriatric group home.
The paradox of this ‘comfort’ zone is the discomfort it causes me. Perhaps instead of calling it a comfort zone, I should call it a zone of familiarity.
There are many themes associated with my relationship with Mike: frustration; embarrassment; genetic relationship; guilt; lack of a happy ending, except possibly in my own mind.
My genetic relationship to my brother Mike:
Mike and I have the same parents, therefore the same genetic components. Why is he the way he is and I am the way I am? Am I like him on some level? My immediate answer is, no, we are very different in every way. However, when I used to visit Mike years ago at his group home, several of his housemates told me they knew I was Mike’s brother because we look exactly alike! Yikes! I had no idea.
Here is an annotated photograph from the 1990s when my father and I visited Mike.
Even with the beard and glasses, I don’t see the resemblance.
I think the resounding feeling is that this year has started the same way for everyone. There’s no great magic or energy to it that previous years have had. As for your brotherly relationship, I often wonder the same about my own. I share very similar physical characteristics with my older brother, so that his work colleagues know me in an instant. However, while I know this is not really comparable to your brothers condition, my affective disorder leaves me to be his emotional and intellectual inferior, but grants me real world insight that he would often overlook. Perhaps similar siblings with such great differences is a way of affording each other two views of the world rather than one?
Apologies for rambling.
No apologies. Thank you so much for your insightful comments. I wish I had an inkling of my brother’s view. That seems to be a never ending, unresolvable issue for me. However it has been food for thought and the entire spectrum of emotions in my life.
Thank you for a glimpse into your life.
J
I would hardly claim them to be insightful, but I’m very glad if I was of any help.
;>)
No I don’t either, but I’m sure up close you will share similar features. .. Jx
Hard to imagine that we share anything but DNA. But you’re right, there must be something in the way of resemblance.
j