I am also going to sit yahrzeit with ideas of Walt

This will certainly be different than with another person whose death led to the same idea, but I still think that it could be good for my general mental health.

One big difference? With that person, it only publishes when the year is up, because their death is only tangential to my story overall. 

Here, of course, it's different. 

Walt, my oldest brother and primary sexual abuser, died sometime during the night of May 31/June 1 or early that morning. 

I start with an edited version of what I posted to Lifering.

My sis told me, after Paul our No. 2 brother, had gotten hold of her. 

Walt's wife had contacted sis Thursday (May 28), saying he sure would like to hear our voices again. Marie said she figured the end was getting near but I think she was still thinking weeks, not days, but at the same time, only a couple of weeks, not several.

I was going to cut another video off my computer camera and send that. I was still not picking up the phone. That was all along a "boundary," and a way of achieving something kind of like closure, in advance.

From dad's death, and I sort of said so with Lifering shortly after Walt gave me his diagnosis, I already realized that's the only real way to try to do something like that. I am not going to the funeral. For the family, I may wire some flowers. But, not going.

Not just because of him, but per the other yahrzeit, still private right now, one religious funeral this year was plenty, and at the same time, theirs was different. I also don't need to be guilt-tripped directly or indirectly while up there. I will anyway from afar, afterward, by about everybody other than sis, I'm sure. Besides, if funerals are for the living, the other living can remember and even mourn their own way.

I don't really feel sad, otherwise, though I may feel bits more of that in the future. Even though he died a bit younger than actuarial age, and not the most pleasant way, with his fibrous lung disease, he was 69. That's also different than someone committing suicide when they're 45. I did, at the first contact by email last fall, indicate that he had been part of a "system," too, and if he wanted to read enough between the lines, he could have seen that I had bits of sympathy for him, even if any forgiveness was conditional, as it remained to the end. If there's any sadness it's that, as far as I know, he never really saw how much he was affected by his own abuse, along with dad's emotional abuse and other things, and how much he passed that on.

I don't feel that numb, either. Maybe I will a little more in the future. 

Sis and I have already talked a bit about how much his wife and their two daughters knew. Stephanie's daughter by an earlier marriage but adopted by Walt, contacted me, and Marie, a little over 20 years ago about an incident that she said had happened to her. It wasn't full-on abuse, but seemed to be inappropriate enough contact that I contacted the sheriff's office for that county, and 24 hours later, a deputy showed up at their door. (A few old-timers may remember me discussing that.) I am not sure if anybody was arrested; I know nobody was prosecuted. I do know that family counseling was mandated. And that this daughter felt angry at me. She also claimed to have seen a copy of a letter Walt wrote to Marie and I. 

I don't know what, if anything, the biological daughter of both of them, knows. Walt's wife knows something. Sis thinks the older daughter actually overheard her and Walt talking, rather than seeing a copy of a letter to us where he admitted the abuse but said he was beyond that, and the fact that he was an ordained Lutheran minister showed that. How much she's admitted, Walt's wife, of what she's heard? I don't know.

Dad's emotional and religious abuse was probably behind Walt being an ultrarigorous "pi-brother" with the church in Concordia, and thus getting shoved out of the ministry by getting his salary slashed. Maybe he thought he could land another call on the QT, like how he escaped Texas in the first place. 

Walt did have his sometimes rogueish charms. I mean, he nearly knocked up the daughter of our next-door neighbor, who was at least fairly attractive. Per sis, I can't remember how dad actually handled it. And, the Walt who got me drunk at the tail end of the abusiveness was also the Walt out partying with high school friends then getting pissed when I tried to sneak along. 

I can't remember if Walt was home from college the one summer dad mocked me for the crush I had, while in junior high, over the one visiting college-age girl. I do believe Paul was there and encouraged to join in.

Why the fuck, when I got sober, did I ever think about reaching out to dad for real emotional bonding?

Related, this was probably part of why I was pissed about Walt trying to "steal" MB at St. John's the start of my sophomore year. 

==

June 2, 2026: One response so far on Lifering to my post. This only reinforces the feeling I've had for months that I'm not really listened to there. 

June 4: Doesn't Walt still have control over some sort of annuity from Dad's inheritance? I've asked before and been told no, or words to that effect, but don't believe it. 

June 6: I was in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge yesterday. When Tim's first wife, Brenda, died, I couldn't get to the funeral, but got out to New Mexico a month or so later. Stopped at Chaco Canyon on the way. I heard (and saw) a canyon wren, and thought "that's Brenda." I don't believe in reincarnation any more than resurrections, but, in a non-metaphysical way, as a quasi-totem animal, I thought that. I tried the same when Ang died, the first and second trips to Hagerman, but it felt forced.

Walt? Coming back in on the first trail I hiked that day, I thought of it. It just popped into my mind: Dried bison shit. It's crap, shit out by another asshole, but. now dried so it can't stick to my feet.

Sleeping in my car the night before, I actually did some "empty chair gestalt" out in the middle of nowhere, and got mad at him, even yelling, for him not recognizing how much he had been damaged himself, then passing that on, and also for him getting me drunk as well as the sexual abuse, and his control issues. 

June 11: No big anger since then. No big care. I note that Marie had mentioned there is a second St. John's alumni group on Facebook, that looks to have 2.5x the members as the one I am in, and that, interestingly, does not yet have a copy of Walt's obit posted.

I have no desire to join it; her tagging me shouldn't have stuck anyway, since I'm not a member.

That was another time in my life, or rather, another life, or another Steve, to go more radical on Hume plus Heraclitus. That's not the same me that was that me, who would try to relive those memories. Sure, it's also true for people I knew there, but I'm more different from that me than they are from their old me's. FAR more different. It's not a different river, it's a different world, if not universe.

And, I look at some with sadness. Doyle Theimer reposting the Holocaust Remembrance Association last year, in a piece talking about "Hamas' lies and media bias." Really on HAMAS having media bias? 

June 13: Well, THAT's wonderful. Marie told me that her flowers never got to the church. I presume mine didn't either, since I followed her lead and used the same flowers company she did after talking to. her. They, Sophie's Flowers, seemed kind of skeezy to me from the start, but I just assumed she knew something special about them. She's been arguing with them over the phone and getting nowhere. I'm just going straight to Wells Fargo tomorrow and immediately disputing the payment. 

That said, especially because she got semi-suckered on how sincere and how complete, or not, Walt's last alleged apology was two weeks before he died, I asked her why she picked this company. I'll see if she tells me any details. If she doesn't, I'm not going to press.

And, we both get egg on our face and look like we don't care, even if our "caring" was for appearance sake, at least with Walt himself. 

I mean, I saw that one other floral company that was actually slightly cheaper, in the general area. That's part of why I thought Marie had previous experience with this company. It pisses me off, especially because I am also thinking that, already in advance of any response from her, she'll probably be defensive. (I didn't mention the sucker with Walt angle; she's already at least partially owned that.) 

That said, two other things, or three.

First and foremost? This makes me even gladder that I've crossed the early federal finish line and another reason to look forward to crossing the federal medical finish line. That will snap the last vestiges of thinking I might need to lean on Marie for some future financial help.

Second? Maybe my thoughts, and fears, that so many other adults know so much more about "adulting" aren't always true.

Third? This leads me to small bits of other thought, back to a night in the upper church parking lot at Calvary in Flint 35 or so years ago. And other things, where I wonder if she has a small slice of mom's one issue. 

Fourth, this may be one of the earliest times, as in quickness of emotional self-awareness, for me to recognize I'm angry as something happens. A silver lining that I wish could have happened in another way. 

My brother Walt and the "end times" with family psychology sidebars

OK, so things have reached a new point with my dying, primary abuser, Walt.

My sis said that, she talked to him sometime in, I think, mid-March, before I took a recent vacation. She was under the assumption that he had talked to me and Tim. Those who read here know that Walt abused Tim, and they both abused me. My sis’s story is hers.

She then found out that was untrue about Walt talking to either of us.

So, she called him again, and cited chapter and verse from the most heinous, though not nearly all, of what he did to me, and one incident with all four of us.

==

Here’s our Facebook conversation, to be followed by some afterward thoughts:

Walt: Sis helped unpack those memories. No wonder I tried so hard to blot them out. I'm ashamed and appalled with myself and horribly upset that I'd ever do such to you.

I'm amazed how you could bear to be in the same family, school, or room as your molester and of all I ever said or did, this hurts the most.

Please know that through all of this, I love you and want the best for you. I remember what you said earlier about forgiveness. Fair enough. But forgive or not as you will I cannot sign off without this final, "I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

Me: She talked with me by email, and a bit earlier on phone. I am glad that you're not only understanding and accepting what you did, but also understanding and accepting this within family dynamics — and hopefully seeing more clearly what happened to you. I'm also glad, per her, that you're doing some sort of penance, restitution or whatever on pushing your denominational officials to be serious on addressing this issue.

And, presuming you carry forward on that last, especially, you can have a more complete forgiveness.

==

Afterward thoughts, after a recent phone call with sis:

First, I appreciate her intervention, but knowing that is why I gave "more full" forgiveness, not 100 percent. I don’t mean to crush him, but, without putting percentages on forgiveness, it is what it is.

Would he even have remembered, or “remembered,” all of this otherwise? Given that, in a letter to the two of us 20 years ago or a bit more, he copped to the sexual abuse, albeit in a non-specific way, I doubt it. I know that my pre-sobriety memories of his abuse were vague, called up but rarely from my subconscious vasty deep, and also detached from emotional content. But? I was the abusee, the victim, not the abuser. He may certainly have been sexually abused himself, but we’re talking about his abusing, not his being abused.

So, color me still a bit, or more than a bit, skeptical. Maybe even a bit more than just skeptical.

That said?

She indicated she might follow up on this Facebook Messenger exchange, in a new phone call to me.

I most certainly did not ask her to intervene again, to follow up with Walt once more on what I said, now that I've talked to him. In fact, I tried to dissuade her from that, apparently unsuccessfully.

It's more than "let sleeping dogs lie." Rather it's like Pontius Pilate: "What I have written, I have written." I may, on my own, give him a final RIP on Facebook. But, I have no desire to talk to him on the phone. None.

And, she says she’s OK not going to his funeral, in part having visited him about 6 months ago. But, it’s like she had to work that out.

Me? I was OK when he told us his diagnosis with not talking to him on the phone AND not going to visit him before he died AND not going to his funeral, and had nothing to work out. Closure is not a thing; I know that from my dad’s death, and never expected to find it here, and therefore never looked for it.

I have seen a rough copy of her follow-up response to him. It's not highly meddling, but it does say that my type of forgiveness might not be satisfying to him because I'm an atheist. Sorry, but that's not really it, I don't think, no more than Tim thinking the abuse made me atheist. She did mention sobriety, though not directly talking about him getting me drunk, or most generously interpreted, him encouraging me to get myself drunk, at age 10. This gets back to the above; since he was the one watching me booze up, and probably laughing inside at it, I doubt he "forgot" it. It is simply something that, not being the victim, wasn't on his radar screen. 

Otherwise, to get back to something else above, I do not want her thinking that this new round will encourage Walt to talk to me further, to try to get me to talk to him on the phone. That's not happening. It's a boundary issue. 

Sis, though a year younger than me, was often my protector in childhood, from physical abuse from neighborhood bullies in Gallup, New Mexico, and other things. She couldn’t always protect me, and at times, I think she tried to protect me to distance and distract from her own situations.

That said, physically?

I was a “runt” growing up. Per the Charles Atlas ads at the back of comic books when growing up, I WAS “5-1 and 98 pounds soaking wet” when I started high school, in fact. I was only 5 feet 5 inches two years later, at the start of my junior year. I didn’t hit the 6-foot mark until the end of my freshman year of college. I was 6-4 when I graduated, and topped out another inch or so in years after that.

We talked about Walt’s perception that I was passive with him since his terminal illness announcement, versus me controlling the narrative, or trying to, on how, when, and how long in written words, I responded.

As far as me controlling the narrative with him, rather than being passive? I think she doesn't recognize just how much I am a mix of the two with her. My being passive in non-response IS how I control the narrative, as I know there's no better way of controlling the narrative. And, that's not just related to this, it's in general.

With my sis, I’m like a stereotypical husband of 50 years ago who says “uh huh” to his wife every 5 minutes in a monologue conversation. I think she’s afraid, today, of being “cut off” in some way; Tim and Paul, the No. 2 brother, don’t visit a lot, whereas I, with this winter week off most years in my past 7, drop in regularly, and even before that, probably visited more than either of them did.

Oh, well. I can say “uh huh” and let her think she’s still protecting me. She’s more than once said that if I have anything devastating financially, I know where I can turn.

On that? Two and three-quarters years to the US federal medical finish line. Four and three-quarters years to the US “FRA” finish line. That’s assuming there’s anything seriously left in either Medicare or Social Security from you Baby Boomers. (I’m not a Gen Xer, either; I and one or two friends of mine have consistently for years described ourselves, in US sociological terms, as “70s kids.”) And, this doesn’t even count both American duopoly parties doing little to help. (End of politics.)

Anyway, I will have “more options” after I cross those “finish lines.” Having already crossed “the early federal finish line” last year, I already have a bit more options.

And, I’ll be glad for them. It’s a reason I remain prudent, even semi-frugal, with my money. Crossing these finish lines with a reasonable amount of dinero, and with the tatterered remains of the US safety net hopefully not even more junked, gives me yet more options.

I also have not quite three years, or not quite five years, to figure out how to further detach from her monologues and her self-perceived (by her, in my going second-level theory of mind) protectiveness of me, and beyond detachment, how to speak back on it at some point.

Like a lot of things in life, at this current point, it’s a low-grade frustration.

Back to Walt. Sis says she thinks it’s weeks now, not months. I agree.

==

Update, April 23: Brother Tim called; we talked about Walt's current status, and about our current perception that Marie is trying to fix things. Fortunately, he, Walt, hasn't indicated he expects an actual phone call from me, even if Marie hopes for that. What she is hoping to fix is hers to worry about, and concerns me not at all.