For such a quiet person, I write a lot.

This simple sentence is me in a nutshell. Although i don a cracked exterior, which has let in too much world. Now i exist as warped. A walking, wounded soldier, who has witnessed too much pain. In turn, i turned crass. I am working on that aspect of me, but in reality, reality has sunken in from the first funeral i attended as a child, unable to look at the lifeless figure of a person i adored, until the moment i snuck a letter into my brother’s cold hand.

He clenched that letter as if his life depended on it. I believe he did one last loving thing for me. There was no removing those words i sent him off with. They now reside in each breath i take. Forever dust in the wind. And each snowflake, a kaleidoscope of memories shared.

I don’t recall what i wrote in my anguish. That letter held a lifetime of our experiences in less than 50 words. Writing it set me free from my heart. At least for the moment.

Today, reading a blurb on infp personality, i realized how little my brother and i talked, yet we understood each other so well. Often our eyes would connect and both of us would burst with laughter. Mostly at my dad’s expense which he never took to, too kindly. I recall one such incident in a restaurant in Madison WI, on our way to visit his parents. We both considered ourselves safe, being in public, amongst watching eyes, but boy were we wrong. He kicked us both under the table.

Silence can be a relationship killer. So is violence. My dad treated us both with that kind of discipline, which was learned from his father. Which was learned somewhere else, along the generational lines. Then a few days later it would be a trip to the soda station where they bottled his favorite drink, since he gave up beer from his Army days. It was always confusing to consider my father. What exactly was he expecting of us?

It killed my dad to know my brother committed suicide. It never dawned on him to consider why. It broke him but never encouraged him to change. He died set in his ways. I never left my dad a letter. Nor did I cry. I had nothing to give him. And only one tear was shed for my mother.

It is just the way life was growing up and it never changed for as long as our family was together. We were together but never aware of each other. It certainly made it easy to say goodbye.