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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.

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Living in the Precious Present (If You Can Find It)

One of the basic traits of someone with OCD is an inability to live in the moment. Learning to do so is one of my big projects at the moment.

 

I’m better at living in the precious present than I used to be. I can remember being a kid, always daydreaming about the future: what I’d look like and how cool my life would be if I were thinner, the clothes I would wear, the girls I would date and the music I would write.

As I sat in my basement pondering such greatness, I’d be binge eating, drinking and smoking and wasting the moment.

Wasting the moment will prevent the future dreams from coming true every time. And so it was with me for a long time. It’s ironic that I did that sort of thing, because I had a nasty fear of the future that was caused by a fear of current events. I was convinced the world wouldn’t make it past 1999. That being the case, I should have embraced the present.

For whatever reason, I didn’t.

Later on, I’d daydream about what life would be like if I got a better job than the one I had at the time. I would have been better off finding ways to make the job I had and myself better day to day.

Through intense therapy for OCD and a program to control the binge eating, I’m much more able to live in the moment.

But I still struggle to keep my head in the moment, especially lately. My wife once compared some of it to my inability to see food portions in the proper perspective. I have no concept of what too much food looks like, so I have to put everything on a scale.

When the OCD runs hot I get the same way about time. I lose perspective on how long something will take or what I should be doing with the moment. I’ll go on the tear around the house doing chores, for example, when more important things are right in front of me, like spending some time with the kids.

It’s a confusing mix and it may not make much sense to you. But it is something I’m working on.

There’s plenty of things to be hopeful of and worry about concerning the future. But in the end, we can only do so much about what’s going to happen.

Better to embrace the moment then, right?

I don’t know how I’ll perfect that one, if I ever do.

For now, I’ll just be grateful that I’m better at it than I used to be.

survival-425

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Nana’s Desk

It’s been more than two years since Nana Ruth passed away. The other day, family went through her house, looking for possessions to be preserved. Like this desk:

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Nana Ruth did a ton of writing at this desk. She was a prolific diarist and churned out a lot of letters. I’m going to keep the tradition alive my doing a lot more writing here.

I’d like to think she’d be pleased about that.

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Dad Was a Survivor

Note: This is not Dad’s official obituary — just my tribute to him.

Thursday we gathered by Dad’s bedside to say goodbye. He lived for three more days. That was Dad. He was a survivor, tougher than leather and stubborn to the last. Around 3 this afternoon, his journey finally ended.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/bT7bbgsyzKc

The last two months with him were a gift. By the end, nothing was left unsaid. He knew how I felt about him and I knew how he felt about me. We got to spend a lot of time trading wits and laughing about all the trouble I got into as a kid. He seemed satisfied with how I turned out.

His mind was sharp to the end, rattling off how he wanted his various business interests wrapped up, how he wanted money invested, how he wanted me to do things that were cheaper than other things.

Dad never had it easy. He faced crushing difficulties. He ran the family business from the time he was a teenager, when his own father fell ill. After the business burned in the Great Chelsea Fire of 1973, he rebuilt in Saugus, Mass. He and my stepmom expanded the business into a global enterprise and thrived.

He endured a tough divorce, lost his oldest child to an asthma attack, and helped my sister through long periods of crippling depression.

He had a lot on his plate with me, for sure. I was sick and hospitalized a lot with Crohn’s Disease as a kid. I was an outcast who rebelled constantly. I saw his efforts to make me work and earn my money as tyranny and gave him a lot of grief. But as I grew older, my work ethic kicked in and I think he thought that his efforts with me had paid off.

He was a man without a filter. He’d tell people exactly what he thought. If he thought you were getting fat, he’d say so. If you came to our house to find him walking around in his underwear, he didn’t care. He was a human honey badger.

Under the tough exterior was a heart of gold. He took care of his family no matter what. He took care of his employees, too. One time, when an employee needed some extra financial assistance with a newborn baby, Dad quipped, “I’m paying for this kid and I didn’t even get to have any fun.”

He loved the little kids. He loved to push their buttons and be a tease. He lived life on his terms right to the end. It was a sight to behold.

I inherited the habit of loving and teasing the kids. I’d like to think I inherited his toughness, too, but I’ll let others be the judge.

Thanks, Dad.

Brenner Paper Co. after the 1973 Chelsea Fire
Dad and an employee stand over the rubble of Brenner Paper Company after the 1973 Chelsea fire. Within a year, he had the business back up and running from a new building in Saugus.

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Thanks for Everything, Aunt Marlene

Marlene Brenner died yesterday at the age of 68. She was my aunt — my father’s younger sister — and I owe her a lot.

Mood music:

Aunt Marlene was a constant presence in my childhood. With my siblings and grandmother, we’d go on trips to the White Mountains and lakes of New Hampshire. Many a family meal was had at her house in the Point of Pines, Revere, which was a quick walk from my father’s house at the southern part of the neighborhood and my mother’s house from the northern section.

My parents divorced when I was 10 and I often hung out in that house to escape the difficulties. I loved that house. More often than not, it was a place for holiday celebrations.

At the family business in Saugus, my aunt had a needlepoint shop in the building for a time in the 1970s. I used to hide in her back room watching Saturday-morning cartoons on the little TV she kept in there. In later years my father put a shoe store in that space and my aunt managed it for many years.

I remember her checking the ingredients of every food package before letting me have it because I was often sick from Crohn’s Disease and wasn’t supposed to have milk.

Her family always came first. She focused on the family business at the expense of a social life.

She didn’t have it easy. She would often isolate herself from the rest of the world and skip family gatherings later in life. As a kid I didn’t quite understand that, but as an adult it was clear that like me and other family members, she suffered from depression.

She suffered a stroke in mid-March and never really recovered from it. Her decline coincided with that of my father, who is still hanging on in hospice as I write this.

It’s been a sad time for the family. But I’ve spent a lot of that time looking through old photo albums my aunt and grandmother kept, learning more about a rich family history I couldn’t grasp as a kid. That’s been a huge gift.

Mostly, my memories are full of family doing the best they could under often difficult circumstances. That includes memories are of my aunt taking me to the mountains and lakes, giving me crucial breaks from my own personal demons.

I’ll never forget that, and I’m forever grateful.

Rest in peace, Aunt Marlene.

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Uncle Jacob

I knew there were heroes in my family. My maternal grandfather fought in some of history’s bloodiest battles and lived to tell us about it. But I never knew my Uncle Jacob. Not until a box of photos and service awards came into my possession.

Mood music:

I always knew my father had two deceased uncles. My grandmother would show me her old family scrapbooks all the time when I was a kid, and I remember pictures of her brothers Jacob and Morris. Morris’ death is still a bit of a mystery. Some family members say he died in a fire. Others say it was a ruptured appendix.

Uncle Jacob Katz was less of a mystery. I knew he died in the war, and a couple years ago my father gave me the flag that adorned his casket — a flag with 48 states, since Hawaii and Alaska weren’t admitted to the union until after his death.

Last week, my cousin Dennis and his wife Nancy gave me the box of memorabilia. It included Uncle Jacob’s Purple Heart and a letter President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had sent to the family: 

Jacob Katz's Purple Heart

There were also certificates honoring him from his hometown, Chelsea, Mass.:
Recognition of Patriotic Service certificate

The certificates and letters note that he died in the “North Africa area” in April 1943. So he may have died in Operation Torch, which commenced late in 1942. Or he could have died sometime after that campaign was over. One thing is clear: He gave his life for our freedom, and I’m grateful for that.

Thanks, Uncle Jacob.

Letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelet

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“Cat’s in the Cradle”

The Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle” has been running through my head a lot. I’ve been taking my work to my father’s hospice room, which is a reversal of roles. It used to be that I hung out while my father worked.

Mood music:

My childhood doesn’t fit the song 100 percent. Truth is I was around my dad a lot. But we may as well been in separate places, because he was always on the phone with customers and employees. He loved us kids and did everything he could for us, but that meant the business was always with us–at the dinner table, on vacations, and so on.

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, “Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let’s play
Can you teach me to throw?” I said, “Not today,
I got a lot to do.” He said, “That’s ok.”
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed,
Said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah.
You know I’m gonna be like him.”

There was a time when I resented it, but I don’t anymore. It was a different world when I was a boy. Many careers today can be carried out wherever there’s Internet access. I can work from home and get to my children’s school events. I can run them to their appointments. I can be home with them on snow days and still get all my work done.

It also means I can get work done from my father’s bedside, though there are a lot of interruptions.

For Dad, running a business meant he had to be there much of the time. If the building alarm went off in the middle of the night, he had to go check things out. If it was the weekend, he usually had to go work at shoe shows, much as I work security conferences today. As I entered my teens, he had to travel a lot more.

In recent years he’s been like the father in the song who, after retirement, wants to spend more time with his boy, who is by then an adult, busy with work and kids of his own.

I’ve long since retired, and my son’s moved away.
I called him up just the other day.
I said, “I’d like to see you if you don’t mind.”
He said, “I’d love to, Dad, if I can find the time.
You see, my new job’s a hassle, and the kid’s got the flu,
But it’s sure nice talking to you, Dad.
It’s been sure nice talking to you”

The difference is that Dad’s been sick for a while now, trapped in a failing body. I haven’t spent as much time with him as I would have liked because there are work hassles and kids to shuttle from one activity to the next.

I wonder if Dad’s ever had a moment like the dad in the song:

And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me,
He’d grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.

Maybe I’ll ask him before his time is up.

The elder Bill Brenner, with Gerry and Michael
My father and older brother visiting my grandfather in rehab. In recent years, my father has been the one in rehab and, now, hospice care.

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A Bedside Conversation with Dad

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my father, who is in hospice care. One of the twisted blessings of him being near the end of his life is that he’s opening up more than he ever has. One such conversation goes to show that things you see as a kid don’t always match up with what’s really going on.

Mood music:

Like a lot of families, we’ve hit our financial walls over the years and a few years ago I had to ask my father for help. That was a killer, because I’ve always taken pride in making things work without having to do that. It was humbling.

I’m a lot like the character Quint in JAWS in that I suffer from working-class hero syndrome. One of the many excellent lines in that movie was when Hooper told Quint to knock off the working-class hero crap, after Quint kept picking on Hooper for not getting his hands dirty enough.

In my case, I like to believe that adults should be able to make a living without any help from family and friends. In a financial rut? You figure it out and avoid asking your parents for help at all costs. I’ve looked down on people who have done that in the past. I described one case as someone using their father like a piggy bank.

To me, asking Dad for help always meant failure.

I think some of that attitude comes from the fact that I leaned on my father’s financial assistance a lot in my 20s. When my 1981 Mercury Marquis finally died a painful death at the hands of its abusive driver, I went to Dad and nagged for a new car. I got one — a 1985 Chevy Monte Carlo.

I look back on that sort of thing and realize what a burden that was on my father. When I got married and settled into my 30s, I vowed never to bother my father for money again. I would manage on my own at all costs.

For the most part, we have. I owe most of that fact to Erin, who is far smarter about finances than I am.

So in the room at hospice, Dad and I discussed the delicate balance of paying for the kids’ private school and keeping the mortgage up to date and food on the table. He floored me with this statement:

“I know what it’s like. There were a lot of those situations when you guys were kids,” he said.

What? I always assumed that he was always on top of the family finances and that paying for things was never a problem.

But thinking back on it all, it makes perfect sense. I just think of the medical bills alone the three of us kids wracked up in the 1970s and ’80s. It had to have been staggering, between my multiple hospital stays for Crohn’s Disease, Michael’s asthma treatment and Wendi’s hospitalizations for depression.

My father practically lived at his business, but I always assumed it was because he preferred to be there than at home. I still believe that to a point. But I think a lot of it also had to do with making ends meet in a world gone mad.

Since I always assumed we were well off when I was a kid, my father clearly did a good job of shielding us from the financial ugliness. So I thanked him.

“No problem. I love ya,” he said.

Love you too, Dad.

Bill, Gerry, Wendi, and Michael BrennerMe with Dad, Wendi and Michael, Christmas Eve 1982.

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My Introduction to Hospice Care

I’ve heard much about the blessings of hospice care, but I hadn’t seen it firsthand until now. After four years of illness, my father has decided he’s fought long enough and has chosen hospice care for the endgame.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/DfStujGaf0E

We visited him Saturday, and he looked and sounded better than he has in a long, long time. He was alert, his talking was clear, and he was smiling the whole time. He’s made his decision and is at peace.

Now we wait for nature to take its course. It could be weeks or months.

I’ve decided to spend a couple days a week working from his bedside. I see no reason to put my work aside, and he would frown upon it. Since I spent much of my childhood hanging around him as he worked, the turnabout seems appropriate.

And while I’m there, I’m going to ask him for stories about the past. I was there for 45 years of it, but I want his unfiltered perspective. I also think he’ll enjoy it.

This is going to be an interesting adventure.

url

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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.