courage2

It's interesting how the family dynamics shift a bit when you get sober -- I'm the youngest in my family and was also a bit of a write-off family-wise, the runt. Not a contributor, ignorable. Now with my brother's mental illness more flagrantly in the foreground than it's been in a long time, I'm getting some weird messages from my siblings. They are "reaching out". I have one sister who's been sober for almost 2 decades and she knows that I stopped drinking, am in AA, and am now on anti-depressants. I suspect she's talked to the other sister. The two of them have started making these uncharacteristic supportive overtures in my direction -- probably even more so towards my brother -- which are sweet enough but kind of too little and way too late. But well-intentioned, I suppose.

I expect they're expressing their own fears, like your brother, RAL, in his way. My parents' generation is mostly all dead now, and since my cousin's suicide I suppose there's a certain amount of wondering what's in store for all of us as we age. Sometimes I think that we hover around the "sick" one partly in superstitious hope that it will somehow direct ill fate away from ourselves.

There's my cheery thought for this a.m.! Have a great day!