The Family Endures, 5 Years On

This week marks a life-altering milestone: Five years since losing my aunt and father a week apart. Both passings were expected. They were terminally ill, their health having declined steadily leading up to that point.

Mood Music:

These five years have been a strange kind of grief. I’ve experienced plenty of that in my life, losing a brother when he was 17 and a best friend to suicide. I’ve experienced more since my father and aunt passed on, especially when my father-in-law died unexpectedly in 2017.

What has made this grief strange is that at the beginning, I had no time to process my feelings. Dad left behind unfinished business — the building that housed the family business for 40 years remained unsold because of a significant environmental cleanup that was just beginning at the time, the result of leaked laundromat chemicals he sold in the 1970s and ’80s.

I was successful in my career and, thankfully, have managed to keep it that way all the while. But in the business world my father excelled at, I was a fish out of water, with no idea of what I was doing.

One thing I have in common with Dad is that I’m a survivor. I’ve aged in recent years, my beard going from mostly black to almost entirely white. I gained a lot of weight and developed myriad health problems before regaining control last year, dropping 80 pounds and developing discipline with food and exercise — just in time to tough out the pandemic. I’ve experienced at least two severe depressions and countless bouts of heavy anxiety in that time.

I’ve failed at things Dad was good at. He knew how to make deals and could be brutally tough with business associates he thought were asking for too much or outright trying to screw him. My tendency to compromise, make everyone happy and be fair have blinded me to some of the human failings my father could smell from a mile away.

I’ve paid the price for that.

I’ve learned much along the way and have taken corrective actions, but as a wise person once said: “Some people get rich. Others get experience.”

I’m finally about to sell the building and the cleanup is in its final stages. But the effort has left a complicated trail of challenges I’ll manage for the foreseeable future.

Left to right: Bill Brenner, Gerry Brenner, Wendi Brenner, and Michael Brenner
Left to right: Me, Dad, my sister Wendi and brother Michael

The things I’ve learned will see me through that. Some of what happens next will come down to a roll of the dice. Fortunately, one lesson from Dad that has stuck with me is that there are no quick solutions. You have to be willing to play the long game.

Tackling these challenges along with doing my real job and being a husband and father has left little time for the kind of grieving I’ve done for so many others — the reflection and tears that are part of the process. My coping mechanisms before finding my way back to fitness were self-destructive.

Maybe I’ll grieve properly by the time we reach the 10th anniversary. For now, there’s a lot I’m grateful for:

I’ve grown and done a lot of cool things in my chosen profession. My wife has branched out with her business in recent years and taken on a lot of challenges that make me proud. My kids have thrived. Both are in honors programs and have excelled in the Boy Scouts (the oldest achieved Eagle rank two years ago, the younger one is well on his way).

My siblings have made me proud by living their best lives — excelling in their own careers and not allowing their grief to crush them.

We’re a resilient family, determined to do good in the world. That will continue.

At one point, obsessed with preserving Dad’s efforts to leave a financial legacy for my sisters and me, I lost sight of something that is now clearer than ever:

That drive and resilience to be a blessing to those around us is Dad’s, and Aunt Marlene’s, true legacy.

Aunt Marlene worked herself to the bone in service to the family business for most of her adult life and lived with my grandmother, taking care of her to the end.

Aunt Marlene with her dog.
Aunt Marlene

She spent a lot of time caring for us kids as if we were her own children.

Yes, it’ll be a difficult week remembering these two forces in our lives. But I suspect that they are looking down, satisfied that, for all the missteps and moments of difficulty, the thing they held most dear is as sturdy as ever.

The Brenner family endures.

Robert C. Corthell, 1948-2017: Trucker, Teacher, Family Man

Robert C. Corthell of Haverhill, Mass., died peacefully at Lahey Burlington Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, surrounded by loved ones, after suffering a pulmonary embolism. He was 69. He fought his brief illness with the same stubbornness and grit by which he lived.

His family and friends knew him as Bob, Bobby, Dad and Grandpa.

He was born and raised in Haverhill and, after serving in the U.S. Army, spent the rest of his life there, though in more recent years he and Sharon spent their winters in Winterhaven, Florida.

He made his living as a truck driver, hauling tractor trailers, commuter and school buses and just about anything else with four wheels and a motor. He was proud of his profession, keeping model cars and trucks around his desk at home. He retired from Conway Freight in 2014.

His nephew, Chris, remembers coming back from Germany in 1981 and riding with him while he drove a commuter bus to Boston.

He was a family man first, always there to help bail someone out if they were stuck on the side of the road or facing other crises. He and Sharon took in family and others in times of need. He was a devoted member of All Saints Parish in Haverhill and sent his daughters to St. Joseph School, then part of the parish. There, he served as a Sunday school teacher and Eucharistic minister.

Above all, he was a teacher.

On the side, Bob and Sharon ran Chandler’s Auto School and, as his niece, Faith, remembers, taught virtually half of Haverhill to drive.

After his brother-in-law, Leon Basiliere, suffered a stroke, Bob taught him how to drive again and helped him get his license back.

He taught just about all of his kids, nieces and nephews to drive and had started teaching his grandson, Sean. At Conway, he taught fellow employees about truck-driving safety. After retirement, he continued to teach driving and safety at the New England Tractor Trailer Training School (NETTTS) in North Andover, Mass.

He taught his son-in-law, Bill, how to drive with a stick shift in a beaten-up Ford Escort up one of the steepest hills in town. Bill was nervous as hell, and thinks his father-in-law enjoyed that.

He was passionate about RV camping and the safe and proper use of firearms. He and Sharon took their camper out regularly, and they lived in one during their Florida winters. Those passions rubbed off on his children and grandchildren, and each summer they would all camp together.

He taught his daughter, Erin, and son-in-law, Bill, how to haul a camper, set it up, close it down and maintain it. He also taught most of his children, his oldest grandson and various friends how to shoot with a firearm.

He and Sharon were avid square dancers and were members of the Firesiders, Montachusett Twirlers and Wolf Rockers square dancing clubs.

He had opinions and wasn’t afraid to share them, especially when it came to politics.

He taught countless people how to live and love. For that, we’re forever grateful.

He is survived by Sharon, his cherished wife of 48 years, his children, Erin Brenner and her husband, Bill; Robin Coughlin and her husband, Tim; Sara Croft; and Amanda Daniels and her husband, Matt, all of Haverhill. He also leaves behind his grandchildren, Sean, Duncan, Madison and Owen, many nieces and nephews, and his siblings: Cindi Basiliere, Janet Gillis, Natalie Pineau and her husband, Steve; Steve Corthell and his wife, Pat; and Fred Corthell and his wife, Terry. Bob was preceded in death by his sister, Nancy.

CALLING HOURS will be Sunday from 2-5 p.m. at Driscoll Funeral Home, 309 S Main St, Haverhill, MA 01835. A funeral Mass will be held Monday, 10 a.m. at All Saints Parish, 120 Bellevue Ave, Haverhill, MA 01832, followed by burial at St. Joseph Cemetery, 892 Hilldale Ave, Haverhill, MA 01832.

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in memory of  (name of tributee) to support the greatest needs in patient care. Please send your gift to: Philanthropy Office, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, 41 Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01805. You also may donate at Giving.LaheyHealth.org/Donate.

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A Tribute to “Silent Segal”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my maternal grandfather, Louis Segal. This decorated veteran died 19 years ago, and I keep thinking of the things I wish we could talk about today.

Mood music:

Papa, as we called him, asked me to take him for a ride to the bank the evening before he died. He got into the car and declared that he felt like “the last rose of summer.” I think he knew he was about to go, and wanted to pull out some cash to buy the family breakfast one last time. In the car, he told me and Erin about life as a kid.

The next afternoon, he took one last deep inhale, and that was that. He died in his favorite living room recliner after a very pleasant morning with family. I wasn’t there, but was told about it. He gave one of my cousins a ten-dollar bill just for the hell of it. I don’t remember where I was, but I can tell you that wherever I was, I was thinking about no one but myself. That’s how I was back then.

Papa loved to chomp on a good cigar and eat things that were bad for him. It used to make me angry, but today I think he was just trying to live life to the fullest he could. He had parachuted into France ahead of the D-Day invasion in June of 1944. He was at the Battle of the Bulge that December. He took a bullet or two in the leg in Korea. He boxed in the Army and they called him “Silent Segal” because he would take it on the chin quietly. He also beat down his opponents quietly.

I often wonder what he’d have thought of the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” which came out two years after he died. The beginning of the film is bone-chilling and almost beautiful in its rawness. You see scenes of soldiers lying on the beach with their intestines hanging out and you try with all your mental might to grasp what it must have felt like to be in the middle of that chaos. My grandfather was there, and could have given me the appropriate description.

He liked watching M.A.S.H., as I do. If he were here today, we could laugh over some of the show’s funnier moments. He’d also tell me all the ways the show was bullshit when stacked against reality.

I definitely appreciated him when he was around. He was my Papa and I loved him, after all. But I wish I had engaged him more about the stories of his military service. I was a young punk back then, and like all young punks I was too busy thinking of myself to spend more time with him.

The lesson of this post if to appreciate the older people in your life. Hug them. Learn from them. Enjoy their stories.

And, if you’re into it, smoke a cigar with them.

Thanks, Papa, for your many years of service.

5 Realizations and Defenses from the Family Business

Big pressures aside, I’ve learned much while cleaning up and selling off the old family business and managing trusts Dad left in my hands.

Mood music:

Until I took on this family business stuff, I’d never had to deal with lawyers or real estate people at this magnitude. I had certainly never managed this kind of money. Here are five realizations — and five defenses — that have saved me from implosion.

5 Realizations

  1. Lawyers are the best and worst of humanity. I have to deal with several of our own and other people’s lawyers for real estate matters and environmental remediation. The best ones guide you through traumatic minefields and save you from your own inexperience. The rest bleed you dry and bog you down — and bill you for every drop of blood spilled.
  2. Hurry up and wait. Lawyers, insurance companies, government agencies and vendors love paperwork. I’ve filled out more in the last six months than I have in the previous five years. They want their forms immediately, but once they have them, you wait months for resolution.
  3. Cost estimates are rarely accurate. There’s a huge disconnect between what vendors tell you something costs and what it actually costs. It’s usually more than you’re led to believe.
  4. A good financial advisor can save your life. Mine has guided me through the intricacies of trust management, investments and loads of related tasks. I never could have handled it alone.
  5. Insurance companies have nice people but evil policies. Processing Dad’s life insurance claims is a mind-numbing experience. When I call these companies and talk to real people, they’re nice enough. But the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. This causes many problems.

5 Defenses

  1. Trust no one. Even when people work for you, blind trust is hazardous. When you have three or more lawyers who have to talk to each other, miscommunication abounds. One will tell you what they think is a solution and you’ll walk away thinking the matter is settled. Then someone else will contradict the previous information and send you back to square one. In business, trust is expensive.
  2. Take care of yourself. I can’t say I’ve learned to do this. But I’m realizing a poorly maintained body will fail under pressure before long.
  3. Paying work comes first. It would be easy for me to let the family business overcome every aspect of my life. There are simply too many moving parts. Early on I found myself taking care of family business before my real work. Then I remembered the real work is what pays the mortgage, the kids’ tuition bills, healthcare and the food on the table. That must always come first.
  4. Make them wait. Since paper pushers take their time, I’m learning to make them wait, too. It’s the closest I come to revenge — and to maintaining balance in my life.
  5. Follow your conscience. I was terrified I’d fuck up everything in the beginning. But when I trust in God and follow my conscience, things work out.

Survival book in the jungle

Life Doesn’t Suck, We Just Need Our Life Jackets

Lately, I’ve been going through a tough period and been documenting it here because it’s another journey and I like to document all my journeys.

One thing I’m re-learning on this trek is that it’s important to find life jackets that keep you from drowning when the floods come. Put on the life jacket for a couple hours or a couple of days pockets to keep your head above water.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/EkPy18xW1j8

Last weekend while the kids camped with their Boy Scout troop, Erin and I enjoyed a full day of quality time, walking around Newburyport, watching TV and having a romantic dinner. This weekend, as I type this, we’re having the first family camping trip in the new camper we were fortunate to have. We’ve been taking sunny walks, reading by the fire and taking life slowly.

Yesterday I went to the gun range with my father-in-law. I picked a target with a big, ugly mosquito on it. Like most people I hate mosquitoes, and I blew off a lot of steam shooting at it, trading off between a gun and a rifle.

The troubles of life aren’t far away. My father is still in hospice, and managing his real-estate business for him is a full job atop my real job. But I’m visiting Dad a lot and talking about old times. I call him every day. It’s a blessing to have that time with him. The business stuff is hard, but I’m figuring it out and it will be fine.

I can deal with the stressful side of those things because I’m also taking time for myself. It’s easy to forget to do that when life gets chaotic. It’s easy to let the harder things eat you alive. I’m grateful that through the grace of God and a lot of support from family, friends and work colleagues that I can find the pockets of solace.

Life’s journey is full of peril. Remember to bring along your life jackets, and everything will be fine.

The author, taking aim at a giant mosquitoPhoto by Robert Corthell

Anatomy of an Identity Crisis

When a sibling’s death turns the baby of the family into the oldest son, you get an identity crisis filled with anger and confusion.

Mood music:

I’ve written at length about my brother Michael, who died of an asthma attack when I was 13. That experience will test any kid, and I was no exception. The loss infused a deep reservoir of fear and anxiety in me that would bubble up many times over the years.

But something else happened that would make me feel strange and alone for a long time.

I started my life as the youngest of three kids, the proverbial baby of the family. Michael was the oldest, and in the Brenner family much has always been expected of the oldest son.

My father was the middle child of his generation, but he was the only son. My grandfather, who came off a boat from the former Soviet Union with all the typical old-school values, expected the world of my father. As my grandfather descended into old age and illness in the mid-1960s, my father became increasingly responsible for the family business.

Growing up, my older brother became the one my father leaned on the most. Michael was encouraged to chart his own course and was studying to be a plumber, but he was also expected to help out with the family business and do a lot of the grunt work at home.

I was the baby, and a sick and spoiled one at that. By age eight I was in and out of the hospital with dangerous flare-ups of Crohn’s Disease. Because of that, I was coddled a lot.

The result was a lower-than-average maturity level for my age. At age 10 I acted like I was 5 sometimes. I would crawl into bed with my father for snuggles, like a toddler might do.

My maturity level hadn’t changed much by the time I hit 13. I probably regressed even further right after my brother died. But as 1984 dragged on, I was slowly pulled into the role of oldest son.

Everything that was expected of my brother became expected of me, and I wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with it. My brother had a lot of street smarts that I lacked.

As I descended into my confusing and angry teen years, I would be sent on deliveries for the family business. I’d get flustered and lose my sense of direction. One time my father sent me to Chelsea for a package. It was 4:30 and the place I was going to was closing at 5. I got there at 5:10 and had to drive back to Saugus without a package. I felt humiliated and ashamed.

As I entered my 20s, all that immaturity and feeling of inadequacy hardened into an angry, rebellious streak. I gave in to a variety of addictive impulses.

As I got older and worked on myself, the confusion and anger gave way to gratitude. The hard lessons of going from youngest child to oldest son have served me well.

I now have a lot of responsibilities with work and family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. For all the rebelling, my experiences gave me a strong work ethic. But like my maturity, it just took longer to emerge.

Holding My Dead Innocence by EddieTheYeti

Holding My Dead Innocence” by EddieTheYeti. Read more of my ongoing series with EddieTheYeti.

Cut Toxic People Loose

We all have dysfunctional friends and family. In some respects, they add color and fun to our lives. But sometimes you find yourself up against that special someone who constantly complains about others and puts you down. We want to accept the latter as much as we accept the former. But there’s a problem.

Mood music:

The latter group — we’ll call them the toxic people — rub off on you. Their toxic tirades seep into your pores until you either (a) get sick with worry because of all the rumors you’ve been fed or (b) end up as a toxic complainer yourself. When you get this way, you will surely bring other people down.

As a Catholic, I’ve been taught that we have to love and accept everyone, regardless of their flaws. Unless, of course, they are a pro-choice Democrat.

Political jokes aside, the line about acceptance makes perfect sense. Love is supposed to win out against hate. I badly want to believe it. But I’ve also learned from experience that it simply can’t always work that way. If someone insists on vomiting verbal toxins every time you have a chance to converse, you have to cut them lose before they poison your soul.

That’s the inconvenient truth about toxic people. You want to love them because you know that, deep down, there’s a good heart beating away. But if you stand too close, you’ll adopt the very qualities in them that you despise.

Don’t let it happen.

If you have a toxic person in your life, cut them lose. Not because you’re selfish and you can’t handle the pressure, but because you have to stay strong for yourself and many others.

Life is too hard and too short to be dealing with negative souls. Pray for them because you want them to be happy and more pleasant to be around. But do so from a distance.

lighting-a-row-matches-510

When Work Becomes Everything, This Happens

As someone who takes work very seriously, an article on LinkedIn by Jeff Haden really hit home. The man in his story had a life in which the personal and professional were so tightly wound that he lost all hope when the business ran into trouble.

For me, family and friends come first, and I know I’d have all the support in the world if I ever ran into trouble on the business side. But there was a time when all my self-worth was tied to work. That’s not good when you’re in an unstable industry like newspaper publishing.

This article captures the lesson I ultimately learned, with one caveat:  I never found myself in a situation as severe as what this unfortunate soul encountered.

 

Why You Need to Go Home Early Today

By Jeff Haden, ghostwriter, Speaker Inc., magazine columnist

woman crouched in depression

Happy Birthday to a Joyful Little Soul

Three years ago today, my nephew Owen was born. We just celebrated his third birthday, but I wanted to say a little something here. Think of it as my personalized birthday card to him.

First, a video for Owen’s amusement, which also has some good advice:

Let me tell you a few things about Owen:

  • He is one of the most joyful souls I’ve ever met. He’s always laughing, excited by every new wonder. He used to cry a lot, especially when I gave him shoulder rides. But he seems to have gotten beyond that.
  • He loves American flags, plants, and Thomas and Friends.
  • He got off to a slow start with talking, but in recent months he has taken quantum leaps in the land of verbalization. Chalk that up as the first challenge of his life, which he passed with flying colors.
  • He can do a fair amount of sign language. I’m 43 years old, and the only sign language I know involves a finger.
  • He loves to pretend his cousins and their dad are trees and buildings. He especially loves knocking those objects to the ground and jumping on them. I suspect this activity is not limited to cousins and uncles, but we were the primary targets at his birthday party. We loved every second of it.
  • We adults of the family can be in the most rotten mood imaginable, but once he toddles into the room and lets out that giggle of his, all other moods brighten.

Happy birthday, you joyful little soul. Uncle Bill loves you very much.
Owen Rocks Yah

The Paul Revere Owl of Rage

A friend of mine from Revere found a drawing I did in junior high school. I had totally forgotten about it, but once I had a look yesterday, I remembered what it was about.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/JCGvONbVCa0

I was asked to draw something that could be used for the Paul Revere School eighth-grade graduation program. I was a misfit back then, a fat, slovenly kid who sucked at sports and verbally fought with just about everyone. But I could draw, and my peers appreciated the skill. My drawings were one of the few things I’d get praise for. So, naturally, I drew a lot of pictures.

This one was modeled after the scholarly owl in the 1970s kids program New Zoo Review. I decided to inject my attitude into the creature’s face, however, and you can see it best in his angry eyes. The picture is a bit blurry, but the eyes come through clearly enough:

Bill drawing from 1984
To be fair, I was just getting into heavy metal music at the time, and that had some influence on this “owl of rage.” But 1984 was also the worst year of my life up to that point. My brother had just died, and it was the first of my two years at Paul Revere School, where I didn’t fit in the way I had at the Roosevelt School in the Point of Pines.

One thing I remember clearly: My drawings always reflected how I was feeling. And at that time, I was feeling rage.

More on this time period in “Seeds Of Rage At The Paul Revere School

The rage lasted all through high school and beyond, though it moderated and mixed with the chaotic emotions found in all teenagers.

I eventually found God, a stable family life and a career, and today I can’t relate to the look in that owl’s eyes as well as I used to.

This makes me happy.