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.
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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.
