My brother is at peace. He died, from natural causes, at the age of 58, on this past Christmas Day. He, along with our parents, is finally at peace.

I can’t tell you the strange euphoria I feel writing those words. My childhood dream, wish and hope has come true. Three people, who I only ever witnessed quaking with anger, are now all at peace.

They were, for my entire life with them, a triangle of anger, dysregulation and trauma. Each fed the other’s pain, compounding it for all of us. My younger brother and I were the innocent bystanders to their incessant chaos and arguing.

Clearly, Leo, my older brother, was the great victim here. He was the child. The parents he was given had so much to make up for in him. He was to heal all their wounds and make everything okay. When he failed at his job, there were severe consequences.

By fail, I mean things like needing to wear glasses or running slightly pigeon toed. These were terrible narcissistic wounds for my parents. He had to pay for their embarrassment at his inadequacies.

I think, when Leo was born, they unconsciously decided to make him their S-U-N. The rest of us were just planets. What he wanted was the most important; protecting his feelings was vital.

My best guess is the constant arguing was rooted in my parents being angry with him for not fulfilling their every dream, and he was angry with them for not fulfilling his every dream. They each relied and were codependent on the other, and nobody’s dreams were coming true.

It was unfortunate for him the rest of the world did not follow those operating instructions of doing what he wanted when he wanted. He didn’t have many friends and spent most evenings at home, with my parents. Home was the only safe place for him, which is ironic, because he was terribly abused.

We all were, but his was always the worst. Interestingly, when we were adults, standing in my parents’ kitchen, my mother made the claim, to my sister-in-law, she had “never hit her kids.” I think Leo spit out his drink. I know we all kind of laughed and said, “are you kidding me???”

She called me the next week, very angry. “Why did we react that way?” She had not hit us. This, at least, explained the rage. She was probably dissociated when she did hit us and then didn’t remember.

She liked to use my father’s belt. Among my siblings, it was every man for himself. I think my younger brother and I knew to get near an escape route. Leo though, somehow, he always got backed into a corner.

She would lift the belt above her head, to achieve maximum momentum and pain, and bring it down, on his little boy body. I remember him screaming, snot coming down his face, “Not the buckle! Not the buckle!”

She cared little about humiliating him. There were days when we would be walking home from elementary school, and his bedsheets would be draped out his window. This was to indicate, to the whole neighborhood, he had wet his bed.

As a kid, I thought there was some practical purpose to this. If a child wet the bed, the sheets must dry out the child’s bedroom window rather than in the dryer, where they were normally put. Now, I understand this was done to shame him.

Leo could not breathe through his nose. This was also a source of embarrassment for my parents. Now, I imagine a quick surgery would fix his nasal passages, but there was nothing then, or at least, he never had any relief.

This provided a problem when he was eating. Since he couldn’t breathe through his nose, he kept his mouth open while chewing. As someone who sat across from him my entire childhood, I will tell it wasn’t easy to watch.

I guess my mother had had a bad day and decided she couldn’t watch or listen to him eat one evening. We were all sitting around the table, eating spaghetti, which was something I would eat. Normally, I was, and still am, an extremely picky eater, which made dinner time drama time for me.

This night though, there was no drama. We were all enjoying our spaghetti, and my mother, out of nowhere, sitting right next to Leo, slammed his face into his bowl of spaghetti. She wasn’t joking. She did it in a rage. She shoved and held his face in his food. I don’t remember much else, but I know it was a terrible evening.

All of our evenings were terrible, but that was one of the ones that stood out. Our mornings and afternoons weren’t good either. One time, after enough pain had occurred, and I decided I could not find a way to be in a healthy relationship with my mother and ended contact, her sister, my aunt, and I were talking.

My aunt asked, “don’t you have ANY happy memories growing up?” I said “no, I don’t.” I woke up to screaming every day. I listened to screaming all day. I went to bed listening to screaming. There was always hitting too. My parents hit us but not each other. I can’t even tell you how many times my lip was swollen from being slapped.

To think of these three people in a state of peace is so incredibly comforting to me.

Leo and I haven’t spoken since 2003. After I stopped talking with my mom, she cut off anyone who still spoke to me. As I mentioned, Leo and my parents were part of a triangle. It was a very sick triangle, but it was all they knew. Leo could never risk losing my mom, so he stopped talking to me.

He didn’t have a wide social circle, but he had relatives. He lost most of the relatives, because they were still talking to me. He couldn’t talk to my relatives and keep our mother in his life. She wouldn’t allow it. He would always choose my mother, and her wishes, over anyone. She would have known how isolating that would make his life after she was gone. I guess she didn’t care.

I found out Leo had died from a funeral home. In Maryland, where he lived, the majority of your next of kin have to sign a form for you to be cremated. Leo had never married, so it was just my younger brother and me.

My younger brother and I haven’t spoken in twenty years. There truly isn’t anything there. We aren’t like siblings who grew up together. We are people who survived together.

When I think of my siblings, I always picture the Americans held hostage in Iran. Yes, they went through an experience together that had a profound impact on their lives, but do they want to get together and meet for drinks? Probably not.

When I got the message, from the funeral home, I immediately thought it was a suicide. My mother had such a screwed-up relationship with Leo, partly because she always thought he was going to kill himself.

It was so dysfunctional, but that’s how it is if you think someone is going to kill themself. You don’t want to upset them or make them angry, so they become people who always get their way, who you give into and for whom you make excuses.

I asked my mom once, why did she always think he was going to kill himself? She never wanted to upset him because of her fears. I was tired of putting up with it all and wanted to know, “had he threatened to kill himself? Did he talk about suicide?” “No,” she said.

We all just walked on eggshells around this sun my parents had created. It was a steady diet of eggshells and parental rage.

I was relieved to learn it wasn’t suicide. When I knew him, he had led a very sad life. It was a life he was born into, as an innocent infant. He never stood a chance in that family.

This is one of my first questions when I get to heaven, “God, what were You thinking giving innocent babies to them?” I’m sorry I won’t be able to report back to you with an answer.

I’m really so happy to know he is at peace. You can’t know how much I wanted to witness a pleasant, kind, even toned interaction among them. I really can’t fathom it but trust it is happening now.