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When Sick is Good

This was one of those weekends where sickness ran through the house.

Duncan threw up all over the place Friday night and was down for the count most of Saturday, as was I. Sunday it was Sean’s turn. During a birthday party at a friend’s house, he threw up all over their living room floor. Luckily, the living room isn’t carpeted, so clean-up was easier than it otherwise would have been.

The point of mentioning this is that once upon a time, before I learned how to manage the OCD, puking kids would have unhinged me. It did unhinge me.

First, I would freak out about the mess and go into total OCD overdrive. I would be rendered all but useless over such things.

Not just because of the mess, but because of the tendency I used to have to let my mind spin out of control with worry — worry that something really bad might happen to my kids.

This kind of thing still leads to compulsive behavior, even with my mental health in better shape. In the summertime, I’m still a stickler for bombing the kids with bug spray before letting them play out side. Fear of the EEE virus is a big motivator.

I also think some fears are justified, and I’ll keep acting on them. The bug spray is an example of that.

But otherwise, I’m now able to keep my sanity together when the kids get sick. I clean up the mess and move on. And in a weird way, the weekend was rather nice because of the sickness.

It forced us all to slow down — something we’re not very good at.

Duncan and I watched TV all morning, resting comfortably beneath blankets. Today, Sean will do the same.

I’ll be a cyclone of hyperactivity halfway through today, but it’s also good to know I don’t need as much lying around as I used to.

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Marley and Me

The author describes the second older brother whose death hit harder than that of the first.

Mood music:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/48842027″ iframe=”true” /]

It doesn’t seem right that a friend’s death would hit me harder and fuel my insanity more than the death of a biological brother. But that’s what happened.

This is the story of Sean Marley, who introduced me to metal music, taught me to love life, and whose death was one of the cattle prods for my writing this blog.

I had known Sean for as long as I could remember. He lived two doors down from me on the Lynnway in Revere, Mass. He was always hanging around with my older brother, which is one of the reasons we didn’t hit it off at first.

Friends of older siblings often pick on the younger siblings. I’ve done it.

Sean was quiet and scholarly. By the early 1980s he was starting to grow his hair long and wore those skinny black leather ties when he had to suit up.

On Jan. 7, 1984 — the day my older brother died — my relationship with Sean began to change. Quickly. I’d like to believe we were both leaning on each other to get through the grief. But the truth of it is that it was just me leaning on him.

He tolerated it. He started introducing me to Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen and other hard-boiled music. I think he enjoyed having someone younger around to influence.

As the 1980s progressed, a deep, genuine friendship blossomed. He had indeed become another older brother. I grew my hair long. I started listening to all the heavy metal I could get my hands on. Good thing, too. That music was an outlet for all my teenage rage, keeping me from acting on that rage in ways that almost certainly would have landed me in jail.

We did everything together: Drank, got high, went on road trips, including one to California in 1991 where we flew into San Francisco, rented a car and drove around the entire state for 10 days, sleeping and eating in the car.

This was before I became self aware that I had a problem with obsessive-compulsive behavior, fear and anxiety. But the fear was evident on that trip. I was afraid to go to clubs at night for fear we might get mugged. When we drove over the Bay Bridge I was terrified that an earthquake MIGHT strike and the bridge would collapse from beneath us.

I occupied the entire basement apartment of my father’s house, and we had a lot of wild parties there. Sean was a constant presence. His friends became my friends. His cousin became my cousin. I still feel that way about these people today. They are back in my life through Facebook, and I’m grateful for it.

He was a deadly serious student at Salem State College, and his dedication to his studies inspired me to choose Salem State as well. Good thing, too. That’s where I met my wife.

In 1994, things started to go wrong for Sean. He became paranoid and depressed. He tried to hurt himself more than once. I didn’t know how to react to it.

That fall, he got married and I was best man. I wanted to be the greatest best man ever. But I was so self-absorbed at the time that there was no way I could effectively be there for someone else, even him.

Over the next two years, his depression came and went. He was hospitalized with it a couple times. By the summer of 1996, he was darker and more paranoid than I’d ever seen him. But I was so busy binge eating and worrying about my career that I didn’t pay enough attention.

In November 1996, I got a call at work from my mother. She had driven by Sean’s house and saw police cars and ambulances and all kinds of commotion on the front lawn. I called his sister and she put his wife on the phone. She informed me he was dead. By his own hand.

I spent a lot of the next 10 years angry at him for doing such a thing. He had everything going for him. And he chose to end it. I didn’t understand it, even as I was descending into my own brand of craziness.

The reason his death hit harder than my own brother’s is complicated. I think it’s because I had been burned for the second time, which is always worse than the first. It’s probably that I was an adult the second time and had a greater awareness of circumstances behind his death. Or it’s probably just the nature of the ending.

It took my own struggle with depression and OCD years later to truly grasp what he had gone through. I wasn’t there for him, but by sharing my own struggles I can hopefully be there for others.

Life has been good in the years since his death. I married a wonderful woman, followed a career path that’s produced many Blessings, found God and had two precious children.

We named our first son Sean Michael Brenner. And with that, I guess I was able to move on.

My son is every bit as smart as the man he was named for. His wit tickles me every day. And he’s caring beyond his years.

You can bet your ass I’ll be watching him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t become too much like the man he’s named after.

Continued in “Death of a Second Sibling“

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http://www.theocddiaries.com/2009/12/22/ocd-diaries-12-22-the-ego-ocd-built/
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Lost Brothers

When my older brother died Jan. 7, 1984, a trend began where I would befriend people a few years older than me. A couple of them would become best friends and die prematurely themselves. It was also the day that sparked a lifelong fear of loss.

It’s been so long since Michael was with us that it’s sometimes hard to remember the exact features of his face. But here’s what I do remember:

We fought a lot. One New Year’s Eve about 30 years ago, when the family was out at a restaurant, he said something to piss me off and I picked up the fork beside me and chucked it at him. Various family members have insisted over the years that it was a steak knife, but I’m pretty sure it was a fork. Another time we were in the back of my father’s van and he said something to raise my hackles. I flipped him the middle finger. He reached for the finger and promptly snapped the bone.

We were also both sick much of the time. He had his asthma attacks, which frequently got so bad he would be hospitalized. I had my Chron’s Disease and was often hospitalized myself. It must have been terrible for our parents. I know it was, but had to become a parent myself before I could truly appreciate what they went through.

He lifted weights at a gym down the street from our house that was torn down years ago to make way for new developments. If not for the asthma, he would have been in perfect shape. He certainly had the muscles.

He was going to be a plumber. That’s what he went to school for, anyway. During one of his hospital stays, he got pissed at one of the nurses. He somehow got a hold of some of his plumbing tools and switched the pipes in the bathroom sink so hot water would come out when you selected the cold.

He was always there for a family member in trouble. If I was being bullied, he often came to the rescue.

I miss him, and find it strange that he was just a kid himself when he died. He seemed so much older to me at the time. To a 13-year-old, he was older and wiser.

He was close to a kid who lived two doors down from us named Sean Marley. After he died, I quickly latched on to Sean. We became best friends. In a way, he became a new older brother. Sean died in 1996 and the depression he suffered has been one of the cattle prods — next to my own fight with mental illness — for this blog.

A year after Sean died, I found another, much older brother named Peter Sugarman. He died in 2004 after choking on food.  His death sent me over the cliff with the OCD firing in every direction. That was the year I realized I needed help.

I was lucky to have known these guys. They certainly helped shape the person I am today. I am forever thankful for that, because I have a life that’s Blessed far beyond what I probably deserve. I would not have reached this point without their lessons and love. Even in death, they each taught me to see the things that truly matter.

Thanks, guys.

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Fear of Loss

There was a time when fear of loss would cripple my mental capacities. I got over it — mostly.

It’s 6:30 Sunday morning as I write this, and a snowstorm is exploding outside my living room window. Sean and Duncan are already playing games on the family laptop.

I’m enjoying the precious present moment, more so since I can remember when my mind used to spin so fast with worry that I would barely recognize the wonderful things in front of me. Including my kids.

In fact, I was often looking at the miracle in front of me and, instead of enjoying it, would work myself into an anxiety attack. Because there was always the chance I could lose it all. Fear of loss.

A word about Sean and Duncan: Sean is an 8-year-old third-grader, one of the smartest kids in his class. Duncan is a 6-year-old kindergartner, equally smart but with more of a romantic streak. He gets crushes on the little girls in his class on a regular basis. They get their brains and their looks from their mom.

They constantly dazzle me with their razor-sharp wit and their kindness toward others. They can pray the Rosary from memory better than many adults. They love unconditionally.

Before I found a treatment program for OCD, I was in constant fear of losing them and their mom to imagined illnesses and other calamities. In 2005, long before the current H1N1 pandemic, when a much more deadly flu virus was killing people in Asia and health officials were worrying that that might blossom into a pandemic as lethal as the 1918-19 Spanish Flu, I worried around the clock that these precious children might someday be stricken with it. I searched five pages of Google search results every morning to get the latest news of every new death.

Looking back, it all seems incredibly stupid. But it also makes perfect sense.

Since OCD is essentially a disease of worry in overdrive, my mind was doomed to always be seeking out something new to worry about. Since I’ve watched a brother and two best friends die, fear of loss was destined to poison my mental juices.

I also used to worry relentlessly about impending snowstorms and hurricanes for the disruptions they might cause.

Then there was the fear of loss in work form, where I’d constantly worry that if I didn’t slave away 80 hours a week at work, I just might fall out of favor with the bosses.

Whenever I had to get on a plane for business travel, I worried that maybe — just maybe — the plane might blow up in flight.

Then I found my faith and found treatment. It was along time coming, but it came.

Don’t get me wrong. I still worry about my wife and kids all the time. When a former colleague recently lost her only child in a motorcycle crash, a fresh wave of worry flooded in.

But I don’t spin mental webs about things that MIGHT happen like I used to. I hardly spin those webs at all today. I know bad things can still happen. But I’ve learned that there’s no fruit in fearing things that are completely beyond my control. All I can do is be the best husband and dad I can possibly be, keeping everyone safe and healthy and giving them all the love I have to offer.

Instead of dreading the snow, I’m enjoying it, even though I have to shovel out the car in an hour because I’m on schedule to do the readings at the 9:30 Mass. Instead of dreading the next business trip, I find myself looking for all the cool, historic places to check out at my next destination. I’ll work hard while there, but I always build in a few hours to take a look at the things I don’t get to see everyday.

It’s a beautiful gift.

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The Stormy Present

A week and a half into this blog, I have most of the backstory etched in. There’s a little more backstory to come, particularly on how Faith has played a central role in my recovery and about how the signs of my craziness were there in my early 20s. More humor is yet to come as well.

Response to this blog has been tremendous, and I thank those who are taking time to comment.

Until the next entries, I’d like to direct your attention toward the right side of this page, where I’ve been fleshing out the Blogroll. There are two worth paying special attention to, both from former Eagle-Tribune colleagues.

Penny Writes, Penny Remembers is not an easy read. The author, Penny Morang Richards, experienced the worst kind of hell imaginable last month: The death of her only child in a motorcycle crash. The wounds are still fresh, and she writes about her grief with the same soulfulness I remember in her E-T columns back in the day.

That she can even face the keyboard every day and etch the pain in stone tells me that she’s ultimately going to emerge from this with a purpose that many, many people will benefit from. It’s a great blog about stumbling forward — falling and crying along the way, but moving forward all the same.

The Sweetest Reasons is Olivia Gatti’s chronicle of family, including her husband and two precious daughters. It warms the heart and is chock full of photos (she is, without exaggeration, one of the best photographers I’ve worked with in the last 16 years).

Taken together, the blogs are an excellent snapshot of the darkness and light we all experience in our life’s journey.