The Lion Will Lie Down with the Lamb
When you kill someone, you don't just kill who they were, you kill a little bit of everyone who knew them.
This quote hit me like a freight train—not just because it’s true, but because I lived it.
I am watching a documentary about Brad Bird. He directed The Incredibles, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Ratatouille, and one of the greatest films ever made: The Iron Giant.
If you haven't seen the film, or read the source material, The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, what are you doing wasting your time here? Go read the source and then watch the film. It's a soul-rending story about being the best you can be, not what everyone expects you to be. Not even what you are SUPPOSED to be.
At least enjoy this great documentary. Maybe I'm biased as an animator, but it's terrific.
The Giant's Dream – Making of the Iron Giant
In an interview, Brad Bird says the above about killing someone. His sister had been murdered by her husband and it unmoored Bird. He started asking the question, 'what if a gun had a soul'. Then when presented with the Iron Giant project he pitched shifting from the Pete Townshend rock-opera concept to the more human-scale and heart-tale that we got.
His comment about killing a little bit of everyone the person knows ripped my heart open.
Brad Bird’s quote hit me like a freight train—because I lived it. My sister almost died at the hands of her husband nine years ago this month.
I have two little sisters. One a year younger (Marie) and a second 3 years my junior (Capri). I was never the kind of brother I think a brother should be. We argued and fought a lot. Mostly Marie and I. Capri, as the youngest, somehow managed to avoid my wrath. But for some reason, Marie and I were always at odds.
I think it was her inability to just stop instead of escalating. I'm not sure which of my parents that behavior comes from. I guess... mom? I don't really think of either of my parents as escalators, but who knows what we saw and experienced when they were still figuring out how to be adults.
I do know Marie's very vocal nature frequently grated on my nerves. And between the alcoholism at home and my parent's work schedule (mom worked nights and dad worked days), it seemed like while we had parents around, we often just had to exist on our own. I think I saw myself as some kind of disciplinarian, which I was clearly not qualified to do. I just yelled and screamed and hit like I saw my parents and aunts and uncles do.
Maybe Capri just stayed quiet and low to avoid the pummeling she could see inflicted on her big sister. But before you consider me a Machiavellian villain, Marie was no light weight. If she got one thing from our youth, it was how to take a hit and how to dish one out.
I wish she hadn't learned that lesson.
Between the home life our parents had in those early days, my own violent contributions and a wicked assault by an uncle that we all feared and loathed, Marie developed a taste for abusive men.
Both of my sisters did.
In the youngest, this manifested in an inability to maintain a consistent relationship. She has been married 5 times, twice to the same man. At 50, she is currently single and will likely stay that way.
Marie, the middle sister, first married a hellion of a jerk who was verbally abusive and manipulative. She had a large family with him and over time, he manipulated her and the courts to cut her out of her own children's lives entirely.
I was out of her life for a number of years because of her destructive behavior, so I am not privy to exactly what happened. It is possible that he was completely justified in the devastating act of cutting a mother off from contact with her four children. But, knowing the man, I think it was her childhood that allowed him to do that.
Marie had been mistreated as a child and though she could give as good as she got, her self-worth probably took a huge hit when she had to go to court and listen to her husband lie and cheat to paint her as a wicked mother.
In hindsight, I wish I hadn't cut her out of my life. She likely felt alone and abandoned during those years.
Because she was.
My parents were there, but where was her big brother? Aren't they supposed to defend their siblings?
What the hell, Wolf?
What would you do if you were a mother of 4, having lost a 5th in the first weeks after birth and your whole life has it's rug pulled out from underneath you?
Well, Marie fought it with drugs, alcohol and education. Always a fan of drink, she turned her habit up to eleven trying to hide from the demons of loss and then used drugs to function as a human being during those numb states. This was important while she took her RN degree and went back to become a Nurse Practitioner.
Her NP would give her a new, well-paid life that she practiced on the road working one temp gig after another.
She traveled the country three months at a time. A huge portion of her income went to her ex-husband to care for her children. A two edged sword for many.
She never spoke to me about how she felt about it. But I'm sure she was of two minds.
Who of us wouldn't be?
On one hand, you can provide your children with a more comfortable life, on the other, your trusting a scoundrel to do that.
With lots of money, lots of time and easy access to drugs, she became a target for the kind of man Gary Michael was.
A worm of a human who gambled and drugged his way to a disability. He was looking for someone to take care of him when he met my little sister.
I remember her coming to see me before she married him and I had little input for her. We had been estranged for more than 20 years at that point and I, full of myself and my own righteousness, couldn't be bothered with her car-wreck of a life.
In hindsight, I can't help but think that if I had taken a single hour and listened to her story—offered her some stable advice, things might have turned out differently.
But I didn't.
I can still see her standing next to the big tree in my front yard, stamping out a cigarette. Trying to play it cool that I didn't really want to talk to her. What a pathetic fail.
She would go on to marry Gary Michael and disappear from our lives altogether. Prior to this, she was in semi-regular contact with my parents and Capri (the youngest) but now even they lost track of her.
We would learn later that Gary Michael would keep her tied up in casinos gambling and drugging every minute that she didn't have to be at work. She was his meal ticket and funder for his life-long gambling addiction.
I don't know what happened that May 2016. She maybe got tired of his constant leaching, insistence on her severing all contact with her family or maybe it was just a fight that got out of hand.
I'm guessing.
What I do know is that the morning of May 6, 2016 a 911 call went out stating that a man had found his wife unresponsive in their bathroom.
He thought she was dead.
First responders would come and find that she was unresponsive, but not dead. They rushed her to the hospital where they put her on life support. She had suffered a hypoxic brain injury that left her comatose.
That means her brain was deprived of oxygen for a long enough period of time that her body was in the process to shutting down.
She was dying.
Had Gary Michael waited another half hour, she would have expired.
That might have been a blessing.
Marie would lie comatose for most of a month. It was a terrible thing to see. A vital and robust woman who we had only ever know to be bigger and louder than almost all of us was suddenly reduced to a flaccid bag of mostly water.
Gary Michael, a former nurse himself who lost his license for stealing drugs from work, knew the terminology to put the medical staff at ease and dissuade any question of foul play.
According to him, they had been drinking the night before and that Marie had too much. He went to bed and found her in her state. He was surprised and heartbroken. But, he didn't count on the determination of Marie's will to live or her mother once she was involved.
A highly experienced nurse herself, a few weeks into my sister's 'recovery' and once the shock of the event began to recede, my mother started asking questions. The first thing of concern to her were the bruises all over my sister's back and shoulders. When she asked the medical staff, they said her husband told them she had fallen. When Marie's mom asked Gary Michael, he evaded and said he didn't know. After that conversation, he avoided being at the hospital any time my parents, my youngest sister, or I were at the hospital. Which was almost always.
Marie was in ICU in a hospital three hours from home, but my parents just rented a short term hotel and lived there for a month.
My wife and I traveled down for a half a day at a time.
I remember seeing my sister's husband sitting in his car once when we arrived. When I mentioned this to my mother, she pointed out that she thought he was avoiding them. Waiting for his wife’s family to leave so he could come in and try to control the narrative.
After a month, the decision had to be made to terminate life support or let her exist in perpetuity at the whim of a machine. I forget why, but the decision fell to my mother. I think Gary Michael had begun to extricate himself from the situation at that point and staff deferred to my sister's family to make her health decisions.
So, my parents decided to 'pull the plug'. My mom explains that as a nurse, she knows there is no quality of life living on machines and if you've got not brain function, you are as good as dead anyway.
We all agreed with this thinking. We could still recall the Terri Schiavo debacle in Florida and none of us wanted to see Marie end up like her.
But, my little sister was as tough at death's door as she had been in life. She wouldn't die.
After we week, she started to show signs of consciousness. Little things like facial expressions when she would hear the voice of my parents, Capri, my wife, or me.
That last one was pretty touching. I thought she'd spent her life not caring much for me. But there was something in there. I would read to her from the Bible and sometimes I would find a tear streaming down what I thought was an unconscious face.
As she started to develop more and more awareness, my mother noticed Marie had a very strong resistive reaction to any moves made toward or around her face and head. She interpreted this as a defensive reaction.
My mother became convinced that Gary Michael didn't just find my sister, but that he had done something to her. She connected the dots of the bruises on her back and can elucidate how you can wrap a large town or sheet around a persons face to restrict airflow.
To get enough pressure to cut off breathing you would need to knot them in such a way that would leave large bruises on the upper back of the person.
When the police were called, almost six weeks had passed from the inciting incident and evidence of foul play was circumstantial at best. Detectives did find that after Gary Michael moved out of the temporary apartment they had rented while she was on assignment there, the landlord had to hire contractors to rebuild the bathroom. The sheetrock had been broken, mirror smashed, sink broken and the door jarred from its hinges.
When asked about this, Gary Michael explained that they had locked the dogs in the bathroom and left for the day and they had torn it up.
They were two Pomeranians.
I don't really understand why this didn't go anywhere. It could be I am biased and so the 'evidence' adds up to attempted murder. But the police didn't see it that way. It could be we are entirely wrong. That the story my sister's husband of 6 months is true. That she was a drunk and an addict who just went too far.
But, my gut says no. My feeling is that Gary Michael is a dangerous actor. My interactions with him in the year or so after this happened always felt off. He lied about strange things that didn't require lies. He always wanted something and when it became clear we all thought he was responsible, he became combative and angry at the idea.
I can understand not wanting to be best friends with someone who suggests you might be a murderer. But anger and deception is the wrong approach if you are trying to convince a family of something other than what they think.
Months would go by with Gary Michael doing everything he could to close all interested parties out of Marie's life. It was atrocious. My parent's had to fight tooth and nail for any scrap of information or thing that belonged to my sister. Finally threatening legal action if Gary Michael did not acquiesce.
Early into the time when she came home, there was a real effort on my sister's husband's part to try to get physical possession of her. My mother thinks this was an attempt to ensure he could get access to her social security.
And true to form, at some point, she discovered he was at the social security office attempting to file that paperwork. But an astute employee asked too many questions and he evaporated like had been doing with anyone who asked to many questions about my sister's condition.
Her condition, specifically, was that the hypoxia left her brain damaged. She has no short term memory and her long-term memories are vague and inconsistent. She also has very limited motor control of her hands in addition to her peripheral vision being impacted.
If you've seen First Date with Drew Barrymore... it's like that but not cute or sweet at all. She doesn't relive the same day over and over. But she will watch the same film for 6-8 weeks at a time before she realizes she's seen it already. Right now she's on her 700th viewing of Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze.
In the first year she was home she cried constantly and couldn't form words. She walked all the time. If she was awake, she just paced up and down my parents very long hallway or walked around the yard inside the fence.
A few times she got out and it was a panic. I found her in the middle of the road a few miles away once. She had no way to tell anyone who she was or where she was from. She didn't know her own name.
She could not (and still can't) feed herself, drink without assistance or use the toilet without an attendant.
It is entirely believable that Gary Michael could have filed for her payments, then driven her to the middle of a desert and simply dropped her off 20 miles from people. She would have died from exposure in just a day or two.
I am glad my sister has found some kind of peace. She doesn't cry constantly any more and at times seems actually happy. She has forgotten that she has 4 children and lost one. She has forgotten that she was married to not one but two different assholes. Those are small blessings.
Recently I read an article on forgiveness. It made a good point, that when we forgive people we aren't condoning their actions, we are giving our selves a gift. I forgave Gary Michael many years ago and so have my parents.
It doesn't make the pain of seeing my little sister in her state any easier, but at least we don't have to carry the weigh of hating a scum of a man.
I even offered to study the Bible with him. He said thanks but no thanks. I'm not big enough or mature enough to tell you that it didn't please me that he refused. It will be punishment enough to live with being who he is and when that day comes to face judgement for what he did (allegedly) to my little sister... well, I'll let God sort that out while I'm busy living the best life that I can.
My parents have been caring for my little sister full time for nine years now. They won't be able to do so for much longer. Maybe they have five years of energy left in them. But I can see the toll it is taking. They are counting on God's Kingdom to resolve this and if it doesn't come soon, it will fall to me and my youngest sister.
We do not have the capacity to provide the care my parents do. Perhaps the love, but simply not the physical ability. That means some kind of facility. I doubt Marie will care, she doesn't understand a lot (though she will tell you she knows her brain isn't working right). But it will destroy mom and dad to see strangers muddle at caring for her. If I am honest, it would be better for everyone for professionals to do the job.
The only reason they can care for her now is that my mother's professional life was as a nurse caring for the mentally disabled. But her emotional connection I think has prevented her from making some tough decisions at times.
For instance, for a time, my sister was behaving like a cat. She would go to my father and ask to be fed and he would acquiesce, then she would go to my mother and do the same. They didn't figure this out until she had put on about 70 lbs.!
Reader, I can't tell you how heavy this is on my mind and heart. I typically shut it out and try not to confront it emotionally. My sister-in-laws death three months ago keeps it in my frontal cortex night and day though. And when I read or hear something like Bird's comments it just rips me wide open.
I don't talk about this in depth with anyone. It might be good to, but I can't help thinking people don't want to listen to my problems when they have enough of their own. If you stuck around long enough to read this... well, I love you for learning a little bit more about me than you probably ever wanted to know.
I know what happened to Marie isn't my fault. It's just unforeseen circumstance. But as I have eluded too, part of me will probably never forget that I wasn't the kind of brother I wish I had been. The protector, the supporter, the lover.
I have spent my life trying to make up for that, running from that boy I was and doing my best not to become the kind of man I fear any woman would dread. I have had some success. But the weight of that burden is incredible. To hate yourself so much that you try to be the kind of person you can love.
Friends confirm I have achieved enough of a measure of lovability to call myself a success, but those demons still lurk deep inside.
Like that iron giant, it's hard to override your programming.
It is true, that to kill someone is to kill a little of all who knew them. But there are extensions of that truth that get into to even how we treat one another. When we are angry, that anger doesn't just impact them. It splashes into the life of all who that person knows. And it splashes back on us too. Maybe that is why the Bible promotes the idea of being wrathful but not acting (do not sin).
One day, we won't have violent actors. That is a promise God's word makes, that the Wicked will be no more. Then we'll see the promised lion and lamb cohabitation. If men like Gary Michael can turn around and find a place there, I am at peace with that. Jehovah knows our hearts better than we do and that isn't a concern of mine.
I am far more interested in seeing my poor little sister made whole again. To see her run and laugh and cry like she should have when she was a child and not born of fear and anger.
Then, maybe, if I play my cards right, I'll get the chance to be that brother that I've read about in books and dreamed of becoming. Until then, I'll try to be as successful as I can by bettering people’s lives as often as possible.
And doing as little damage as I can along the way.
I love you for reading here. May God's peace find you now.
WIWL
#essay #memoir #littlesister #irongiant #confession #alcoholic
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