The Most Important Book Ever Written About Sharon Tate And The Manson Murders

I’m reading a book called “Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice,” written by Tate family friend Alisa Statman and Brie Tate, niece of Sharon Tate. It may well be the most important book written on the Manson case.

Mood music:

The simple reason is that it captures a family’s grief and struggle to move on — something all our families have dealt with in various forms.

Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family's Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice I’ve written a lot here about my interest in the Manson case. This past November, I drove to the Tate and LaBianca murder sites during a trip to L.A. The story tapped into my fearful side at a young age, when Channel 56 played the two-part “Helter Skelter” movie every year. But until I downloaded this book onto my Kindle, I never truly appreciated what the Tate family has been through all these years.

I knew Sharon’s mother, Doris Tate, was a tireless victim’s rights advocate up to her death in 1992 and that her daughter Patti (Brie Tate’s mother) carried the torch until her death from cancer in 2000.

The Tate family has spent the last 42-plus years living with its tragic ties to criminal history. The book is a collection of narratives written by Doris, Patti, and P.J. Tate (Sharon’s father).

P.J. writes about having to go to the Cielo Drive house shortly after the murders to clean up all the blood and collect his daughter’s things. Patti writes about her struggle to hide from the prying world and live in quiet, only to have her family history come back to haunt her every time.

You see how Doris emerged after a decade of mourning to become a tireless fighter for victim’s rights, prison reforms and keeping her daughter’s killers in prison. You see P.J. and Patti getting upset with Doris again and again for keeping the family in the spotlight through her work. The wreckage of their lives includes all the usual tormentors: addiction, gut-shredding guilt, fear and anxiety. You see them learning to live again and finding purpose.

It’s the ultimate story of battling adversity.

I wish this book had come out before my L.A. trip, because I would have looked at those murder sites with a different set of eyes.

The Manson case has been a source of obsession for many, many people over the years. There’s the natural curiosity about what drives human beings to kill. There’s the horror and blood aspect that sucks people in. But what often gets lost is what kind of people the victims were, and what happens to those they unwillingly leave behind.

This book is all about the latter. That’s why I think it’s so important.

I think Brie Tate did her family proud with this work. I look forward to seeing what she does in the future.

February 17, 2012

Chain Smoking In Bickford’s Was The Best

Though I no longer smoke or eat the kind of food they served, I’m feeling nostalgic about the days of old when you could sit in any of the dim, dank coffee shops in the local Bickford’s chain for hours, hanging out, chain smoking and drinking those awful, bottomless cups of black coffee.

I blame The Doors for this trip down memory lane. I’ve been listening to their first album this morning and when “Soul Kitchen” came on, the lyrics transported me back.

Well, your fingers weave quick minarets
Speak in secret alphabets
I light another cigarette
Learn to forget, learn to forget
Learn to forget, learn to forget

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I’ll wander baby
Stumblin’ in the neon groves

Well the clock says it’s time to close now
I know I have to go now
I really want to stay here
All night, all night, all night

It makes sense that I was going through the Jim Morrison phase in those days. I used to sit at the table for hours and hours, with friends or alone, tearing through a pack of Marlboro Reds and filling notebooks with song lyrics, bad poetry and, occasionally, an essay I had to write for school.

I had two favorites: A Bickford’s in Swampscott and another in Lynnfield, right off Route 1 North at the Peabody line. The latter location is now a pretty good Greek restaurant. The former is now an Uno’s Pizza restaurant.

The food at Bickford’s was pretty bad, too. But it always hit the spot for a 20-something kid who had just spent the night drinking, smoking marijuana or both. I would often end up at one of these places at 5 in the morning after a late night. We would order the junkiest breakfast food they had, drink the coffee, smoke and be generally obnoxious. But everyone else was usually there under the same circumstances, so we fit right in.

On Tuesday afternoons, me and a couple friends would sit in the Swampscott shop laughing at how we were the only people there under the age of 76. Tuesday afternoons was when they had the senior citizen dinner specials.

It always puzzled me that they would eat there, since the food quality was no better than what you would find in any given nursing home. I felt the same way about the old-timers who would flock to a place on Route 1, Saugus called the Hilltop Steakhouse. The food there was a little better than Bickford’s, but not too much better.

Here’s where we get to the big point of this post.

When we’re in our 30s, 40s and 50s, I think we go through a long phase of food snobbery where only the more sophisticated bistros will do. But when your very young or up there in age, all that really matters is the change of scenery and hanging out with friends and significant others.

Of course, we live in a much different world now. Smoking is almost universally banned. Restaurants kick you out if you don’t buy something.

True, you can sit in Starbucks for hours nursing the same coffee and not be bothered, but that’s different. Starbucks has a cleaner, more comfortable environment, and the food and drinks cost more than it used to cost at Bickford’s.

Meanwhile, the food is usually steeped in some “artisan” concept. The quality ain’t much better, but the packaging is a lot more slick than, say, Bickford’s corned beef hash.

I love that Starbucks has so many blends and roasts to choose from, though I sometimes laugh over how they over do it with their seasonal and holiday blends.

You have the Christmas Blend, Thanksgiving Blend, etc. They could go on with this shtick indefinitely, with a “Good Friday Blend” that has no taste or color, in keeping with the Christian obligation to fast. Or they could do a “Back To School Blend” with traces of speed in the mix to jolt students back into the studious frame of mind.

I’ll tell you what, though: It was far cheaper and efficient to get back into studying when you could make pennies for bottomless coffee and smoke your way through assignments.

Those are happy memories, but today’s scenario is a better fit for who I am.

I don’t smoke anymore. I’m sober. I don’t eat flour or sugar. I sleep at night and work by day.

It’s good to have the memories, though.

February 6, 2012

Playing Chicken With The Wedding Train

It’s a common pain in the ass when a couple is planning their wedding: Someone threatens to boycott the event unless so-and-so is uninvited.

Mood music:

In the run-up to my wedding in 1998, a close cousin pulled this when he got into a fight with my aunt — his mom. She went to the wedding and he skipped it. I haven’t seen or heard from him since then. Erin and I were paying for most of the wedding ourselves and were determined to keep the guest list small. That led to all kinds of hurt feelings about this one or that one being invited while someone else was excluded.

At my sister‘s wedding in 1996, a whole section of the family — led by my mother — boycotted the event because they were not fans of the groom. That they were ultimately right about the guy is beside the point. They could have given her love and support anyway, but chose not to. I don’t really fault them in the end. We’re all human and our emotions often get the better of us.

But to the couple getting married, this sort of bullshit is the stuff of terrible anxiety and lost sleep. They’re trying to make their loved ones part of their special day, then someone decides to make it about them and start dictating the terms of their attendance.

A bright exception was my cousin’s wedding last summer. A lot of family members who aren’t on speaking terms stuffed their attitudes in their pockets and behaved on what turned out to be a wonderful occasion. At the time I gave my mother a lot of credit for being cordial on that day.

After the wedding my mother called and asked if we could try to heal the rift between us. Since then I’ve invested a lot of effort and emotion into doing so. Along the way, I unblocked her from Facebook. Trust me: It took a lot for me to do that.

She found this blog, as I intended. I knew it would be hard for her to read, but I was hoping she could get past some of the more unpleasant childhood memories I shared and see the bigger picture — that I had forgiven her and taken responsibility for my own mistakes; and that my head was in a much healthier place then it was the year our relationship crumbled. That’s the whole point of this blog, really, that a person can overcome a lot of ugly emotion and turmoil and discover real joy.

Unfortunately, she missed all that stuff and zeroed straight in on what she saw as my distorted picture of her. Over several conversations and blog posts directed right at her, I tried to steer her toward the right perspective.

But like she has done so many times before, she emerged with a picture of herself as the victim of someone else’s torment. First she unfriended me on Facebook. Then she called me and suggested that I was a deeply disturbed mental case in need of emergency treatment.

And now we’ve come full circle:

My sister is getting married again and my mother has threatened to skip the wedding unless me, my wife and kids are excluded.

Like so many times before, she is making it about her grudge instead of someone else’s happiness.

It’s sad. I feel for her, because I want her to be in a better mental place. But I guess that’s not going to happen.

I’m going to have to put this relationship back on ice. I don’t regret trying, though. It’s better to try and fail then to do nothing.

Still, the whole thing is sad.

January 7, 2012

Celebrating A Lost Sibling

My brother died Jan. 7, 1984. On this anniversary, I find myself grateful that he was in my life. He left a positive mark on me and left plenty of amusing family stories.

Mood music:

I’ve already written plenty about the darker side of dealing with his death. You can read about it in “Death of a Sibling” if you’re interested. In this post, I just want to celebrate a few things:

1.) Michael is lucky because he was recently joined in Heaven my our old neighbor, Al Marley. They must be trading some rousing stories about all the ocean adventures they shared.

2.) My kids are at an age where they can appreciate stories about their uncle Mike, including the yarn about how he switched the hot and cold water pipes in his hospital bathroom during one of his asthma attack stays because he was pissed at the medical staff.

3.) I’m at a point in life where I no longer have to obsess about how his death shaped the man I became. I’m fine with who I am and how I got here doesn’t matter as much anymore. The important thing is what I do with the future.

I do think he would have been amused as hell by my attempts to copy him after his death.

He probably would have been amused to find me hanging out with Sean Marley and listening to Motley Crue and Def Leppard. He would have noticed my widening girth and got on me about it. Despite his asthma he was a fanatical weight lifter. He’d be on my ass to join a gym. Just not his gym. Me hanging around his gym would have been gross.

Right after he died, I did join his gym, Fitness World. It was just down the street from our house, a short walk down a side alley. I wasted no time trying to be him, and lifting weights in Fitness World was as good a place as any to start my charade. I lasted maybe a week. Everyone there expected me to be him. I should have figured out then and there that there could only be one Michael S. Brenner.

Later in my teen years, he might have punched me in the face or broken my other middle finger (he had broken one of them in the back of my father’s van one day when I flipped him off) for wearing his leather jacket. It was a true biker’s jacket, with the zippers on the sleeves and scratch marks from a few falls he had off his motorcycle. He was one cool-looking motherfucker in that jacket. But when I put it on, it was two sizes too small. I wore it anyway.

He might have been jealous of the palace I made out of the basement apartment at 22 Lynnway. At the time of his death the place was being renovated and the plan was for him to move in there. Instead, my father rented it to a guy who was nice enough but always seemed to be fighting with his girlfriend. Since my bedroom was in the basement level at another end of the house, this often pissed me off. Sometimes I heard the make-up sex, and that pissed me off even more. It’s hard to get lost in your quiet, dysfunctional mind when people are making a racket on the other side of the wall. The guy moved out by late 1987 and I moved in.

He might have been annoyed when I decided not to pursue a career in drafting. I wanted to be a writer instead. The poetry I was writing at the time would have sent him into fits of laughter. It would send you into fits of laughter, too.

He was going to be a plumber, and he might have shaken his head back and forth in disgust at my inability to do anything useful with a set of tools.

What he would have thought of me in the 1990s, or of Sean Marley, for that matter, is probably not worth exploring. Had he lived a lot would have been different. I don’t know if Sean and I would have gotten as close as we did, and had that been the case, his death in 1996 wouldn’t have sent me into the self-destructive nosedive I found myself in.

He probably would have been pleased to see me get my demons under control in the last decade. He might even appreciate my decision to be open about it in this blog. But he might not have told me so.

One thing I’m pretty certain of: He would have loved his nephews, and they would have loved him.

Today, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I’m blessed with the best wife and kids a guy could have. In my work they pay me to do what I love, which is pretty rare. I have many, many good friends.

Michael is probably staring down, approving of it all.

January 4, 2012

Hey, Mom, Read This

I got a call from my mother this morning. She says she’s been reading every post in this blog and that she’s very worried about me.

“You have a beautiful wife, two healthy kids and a wonderful job, yet I read your blog and see someone who is very unhappy and disturbed,” she told me. Incredibly, she was worried that I might try to hurt myself someday.

Nothing is further from the truth. Which brings me to this post.

She commented on my last post, suggesting I’m still suffering the effects of massive doses of Prednisone during childhood. She wrote:

“When you were really sick in the hospital you were put on one of the highest doses of prednisone they give. Low doses make people have ocd tendencies while on the drug. High doses are 100 times magnified. Thus your many loud memmories. Ask any doctor what this drug can do. Having said that I will note that we are all very happy you came through the physical problems. However I think this drug is still making you sick. Even though you have not taken it for a very long time. I have taken moderate to high doses (not nearly what you took) and came home from the hospital like a crazy just let out of the mental hospital. I cannot even imagine what it did to you. But I am not convinced that this drug ends with the end of the prescibed dosage.”

There’s a lot of truth in there regarding the lingering effects of Prednisone, but that’s a topic best saved for the next post.

For now, I want to tell my mother that the reality of this blog is the complete opposite of what it’s really about. In an effort to set her straight, I’m asking her to read the following posts…

First, some words about how having the occasional bought of depression doesn’t mean a person is unhinged or even unhappy. Depression has it’s emotional components, but a lot of it is about basic science and brain chemistry: things that can be managed with the proper awareness and treatment.

Read:

A Depressed Mind Is Rarely A Beaten Mind

Depressed But OK With It

Beauty And Gratitude In Every Bad Thing

A Link Between Prednisone, Mental Illness

This post where I tell people there is no reason to avoid or be ashamed of therapy

“The Engine” where I compare mental illness and the treatments do the engine of a car.

Next, some words of encouragement I try to send people, especially kids, going through what I’ve experienced, the goal being to give them hope and inspire them to take command of their lives — not sink deeper into despair:

A Letter to Addie, a Child Fighting OCD

Mister Rogers’ Mother Was Right

Message for a Young Friend

Finally, read these posts because they are all about me making it through the rough stuff and reaching a point where I am a much happier person who loves to experience things I used to fear:

The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story. About the wife who saved my life in many ways.

Snowpocalypse and the Fear of Loss. The author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly.

Fear Factor. The author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

Prozac Winter. The author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.

Rest Redefined. The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.

Outing Myself. The author on why he chose to “out” himself despite what other people might think.

Why Being a People Pleaser is Dumb. The author used to try very hard to please everybody and was hurt badly in the process. Here’s how he broke free and kept his soul intact.

Hopefully, you’ll walk away with a new perspective. This thing is really about overcoming obstacles and learning to put ongoing challenges in their proper place.

If you don’t feel that way after more reading, we’ll simply have to agree to disagree.

January 1, 2012

My Mother Unfriended Me

A bump on the path to reconciliation after five years of estrangement from my mother: Angered over posts about my childhood, she has unfriended me from Facebook.

Mood music:

I wasn’t too surprised. I knew that recalling childhood as I remembered it wouldn’t sit well with her. But I was hoping — really hoping — that she would see the bigger picture I’ve been trying to present: One where I’ve turned out fine despite earlier struggles. I also hoped she would recognize my efforts to point out where I’ve been wrong and hurtful along the way.

Ah, well.

She did call to wish me a Merry Christmas, and told me she dropped me because she didn’t want certain friends and relatives to see the blog through her connection. Fair enough.

“I wish you thought about the consequences beforehand,” she said. “Or maybe you did and this is what you wanted.”

“Consequences” is one of those words that almost always means something bad — the putrid result of an ill-advised action. In this case, people seeing my mother as an abusive “Mommy Dearest” type is the consequence of writing my back story.

But in my opinion, it was necessary. Everyone struggles in life. Our history always shapes us. I had to show you all where I’ve been so you can understand where I’m going.

Someday, my mother might understand.

December 20, 2011

You’re Missing The Point

Based on some of the reader feedback I’ve received lately, it’s a safe bet that some people miss the point of this blog.

Mood music:

When they read about the tougher things I’ve been through, they walk away with the notion that this is about stewing over childhood pain and obsessing over the challenges of everyday life.

But that’s not the point at all. This is about finding the beauty in life and celebrating the victories regardless of what life throws at you.

A year or so ago I led a meeting of Overeater’s Anonymous (OA), which is a 12-Step program for compulsive binge eaters, much like AA is such for alcoholics. During these meetings, the leader tells his or her story for about 15 minutes. The first five cover the speaker’s ugly path to addiction, the second five focuses on the point we hit bottom and entered the program, and the final five are about how our lives are today in recovery.

So I delved into the stormy past: The older brother dying, the best friend killing himself, the childhood disease and the depression and addiction that resulted. And, of course, the underlying OCD.

At the end of the meeting, someone expressed shock over all the troubles I’ve been through. “It’s just been one tragedy after another,” the person said. “You’ve had a horrible life.”

A horrible life? I don’t think so.

Consider the following:

I may struggle with addictive behavior, but I’m not shoving junk down my throat until my insides are ready to explode like I used to.

I may have struggled during points in my career where the demons were winning. But I’ve survived all that and made close friends in every work environment I’ve ever inhabited.

While I have been through the meat grinder, there have been many years of peace, joy and happiness in between the bad stuff. All these events are stretched out over the 41-plus years I’ve been around. If you were to sit and watch even a three-hour replay of events, you’d find it a lot more boring.

To understand this, just think about your own life. You’ve no doubt experienced sickness and death, family dysfunction and career ups and downs.

If you haven’t, you will.

In between the rough patches, I fell in love with and married the best gal on Earth, had two precious children who keep me laughing and loving, I’ve enjoyed a lot of success in my career, traveled to a lot of cool places and found God.

That stuff doesn’t suck.

Then there’s the joy I feel every day in recovery. All the great friends I have, doing a job I love and having the OCD under control.

Would I want to go through the bad stuff again? Of course not. But the weird truth is that I’m not sure I’d change the past, either. It’s easy for someone to wish they had a lost loved one back in their life and that they were less touched by illness.

But without having gone through these things, would I be where I’m at today?

I really don’t see how.

So when you read about some of the tougher things in this blog, don’t worry about me and don’t feel bad. I’m no different from most people in what I’ve been through, and it’s all good.

December 15, 2011

When You’re A Kid, Little Incidents Are A Big Deal

A point my mother made regarding some of what I’ve written about the past: “I remember differently than you on most entries. Not because I am blind but because children are little and see things big.”

Mood music:

I don’t disagree with that. When you’re little you do see things big.

In this case, my mother was referring to the stuff I’ve written about my childhood and whether things really happened as I remember it. “I love you but cannot understand how you can go online and write these awful Mommy Dearest entries,” she wrote to me (full comment — and my response — at the bottom of this post).

For those who aren’t aware, “Mommie Dearest” is a memoir written by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of actress Joan Crawford. The book, which depicts Christina’s childhood and her relationship with her mother, was published in 1978 and released as a movie in the early 1980s.

Christina’s version of her childhood is brutal. By her account, her mother beat her with a wire hanger, made her scrub the bathroom floor in the middle of the night and cut her son and daughter from her will.

As kids we joked about the movie and often suggested our mom was “Mommie Dearest.” To this day, truth be told, the scene in the movie where Joan freaks out about the wire hanger sends me into a fit of laughter.

My mother always hated when we made the comparisons, which is understandable. The thing is, I don’t really remember her as a “Mommie Dearest.” Not even close. Ugly things did happen back then, but we suffered as a family. My mother reacted back then in ways that didn’t make sense to me, but I don’t see her as the symbol of a bad childhood. Not for one second. Her love for us kids was unmistakable, even when she struggled to cling to sanity in our presence.

Why do I write about it here, for all to see? There are several reasons.

To understand my adulthood with OCD and addictive behavior, it’s important to see how I got that way. History plays an important role in how our adult demons manifest themselves. If I don’t share this stuff, the reader won’t connect with all the points I make about how I was able to overcome a lot of demons. To that statement some will cry bullshit. That’s fine by me. The memories must be shared because that’s how the reader is able to relate what I tell them to their own experiences.

Those who have written me about how this blog has helped them gain perspective about their own lives and allowed them to start dealing with their problems always point to the back story. They relate to it first, and then they are able to put my end points into perspective. Without the raw recollections to chew on, you can’t start building a foundation of strong recovery.

Also, since this blog is part memoir, the author’s recollections will inevitably leave some people stung and pissed off.

This exchange with my mom has been useful in that it makes me look at my own behavior as a parent.

I’d love to tell you that I learned from my parents’ mistakes and have been a better dad as a result, but is that really how my kids see it?

After all, as my mother noted, when you’re little you see things big.

When they’re in their 40s, will they remember my smaller quirks as explosive outbursts that cut them to the core?

I guess I’ll find out in a few years.

But for now, it gives me extra incentive to conduct myself in a way that they will look back on with respect and happiness.

If I succeed, everything I went through will have been worth it.

December 12, 2011

Seeds Of Rage At The Paul Revere School

My friend Marc Serra posted an eighth-grade class picture from the Paul Revere School, circa 1984-85. The scowl on my face says a lot about the time.

Here I am, first from left in the back, looking like I want to stab someone in the eye:

The photo was snapped maybe a year or so after my brother died. I was gaining weight by the boatload and couldn’t seem to stop. Some of the kids picked on me as a result, though I gave as good (or badly) as I got. Things at home were less than harmonious for the obvious reasons.

This is around the time I was starting to rebel. I grew my hair long and started staying out late, especially when I was with my father, who didn’t keep tabs on me as closely as my mother did. I learned to escape not just in food, but in alcohol and weed.

The school district knew I was an emotional, troubled kid. I started getting extra help in elementary school because of the toll Crohn’s Disease had taken on my young body. It worked at first, but when I went to the Paul Revere School for seventh and eighth grade, the safety was off the gun.

There, kids were divided into three groups: The A group, the B group and the C group. The first was for the kids who consistently got As on their report cards. To the lower groups, they were sort of an elite class. The B group is where most kids were. Then there was my group, the C group, where the kids with bad grades were sent to rot. I think the school was trying to do what was best for students. But the stigma of being on the low end of the student body was damaging all the same.

Call it the unintended consequence.

The C kids were never really encouraged to study their way to the B or A groups. We just got teachers that gave us the bare minimum for work and treated us like troublemakers to be kept in line.

Indeed, the C group was where all the troublemakers were. I was a quieter version of trouble. I mostly hurt myself by dabbling in addictive substances and ignoring the academics. Other kids in my class were always getting into fights and some were already getting arrested. There were some so-called normal kids in the mix who did study their way into the higher groups.

Some of the C kids got picked on a lot, including me, though I also met a lot of great kids along the way.

I remained a slacker in high school and it took a couple years of community college before I found my ability to study hard and advance.

It all worked out for me, and I have no regrets. Those days were what they were, and as I look at this picture, I see kids I remember fondly.

Marc Serra and I bonded over music, including the AC/DC song at the start of this post. All the girls in the row in front of me were kind to me. One of them, Lena Cerundolo (third from left) lost a sibling, too. Several kids were originally from the Roosevelt School in the Point of Pines, and we had essentially grown up together. I hope everyone in the picture is doing well today. I know many of them are, as I’m in touch with them on Facebook.

This picture is like the fourth-grade report card I wrote about recently. It’s a snapshot in time, something I can look at and suddenly remember everything I was going through at that point.

Staring at it in the rear-view mirror, I have no regrets or grudges. History played out as it was meant to, and here we all are.

Thanks for sharing, Marc.

December 9, 2011

My Mother Found The Blog

In my slow effort to reconcile with my mother, I made it easier for her to find this blog. Given the raw emotion to be found here, I was pretty sure it would be rough.

Mood music:

I suspect it hasn’t been easy for her to read through this thing. Not at all. But her initial comments suggest she’s really trying to get it and put it in the proper perspective.

Some of my memories are not as she remembered the sequence of events, but I knew that would be the case. As I try to point out regularly, this blog is based on my recollection of things. But my recollection is never going to be the same as how others saw it.

One of my favorite rock autobiographies is “The Dirt” from all four members of Motley Crue. What I love about it is that each member writes about the same events, and while they remember many details the same way, there are other events each band member remembers differently, especially when it comes to what they think was going on in their bandmates’ heads. By seeing the four different perspectives, events become a lot more real and ironclad.

That’s why I always encourage family members to chime in via the comments section. If they remember an event differently, the reader should know about it. Then we get closer to the truth.

I suspect my mother will focus more on the bad stuff in here than the good. It would be hard not to when you’re essentially reliving family history as remembered by the youngest child.

That has to be a mind-bender.

She commented this morning that while she doesn’t remember everything the same way, she understands (or at least accepts) my need to write it all down and share. She suggested that she just wants me to be well and focus on my family.

She also noted that the post I wrote about my brother’s death had a couple facts wrong. He didn’t walk to the ambulance as I remembered, and he died earlier than I thought. She said it as an FYI, not in an accusatory, bitter tone.

I don’t think she would have been able to see things this way even a couple years ago.

I’m still not sure how far I want to go with this. I’m still somewhat gun shy about getting too close again. That’s not her fault. It’s just that I have my OCD triggers, and I have to be mindful of them. I have to set clear boundaries. I’m still going to keep my distance. But I’m at least ready to talk.

I started to feel this way at my Cousin Andrew’s wedding in August. I saw a lot of family members I hadn’t seen for a very long time, and I was admittedly feeling somewhat lost.

I give my mother a lot of credit. Despite all the trouble between us, she gave me and Erin hugs and was very friendly. That couldn’t have been easy. My stepfather kept his distance, but given the tension in the air, who could really blame him?

My Aunt Robin didn’t say more than three words to me, but that’s ok. She hadn’t seen us in a very long time and that has to create some awkwardness. I watched her being a good, nurturing and loving aunt to several cousins, and that made me happy. It was really good talking to my Aunt Dee. The two of them look great. Aunt Robin has such a close resemblance to my late grandmother that I was taken aback at first. It goes to show that the dead live on in others. Also very comforting to see.

One of my cousins was there and it was the first time I had seen her in over 20 years. She’s not on speaking terms with much of the family. She didn’t remember me on sight, but last time we saw each other I was a skinny, long-haired metal head. Now I’m a husky, bald-headed metal head.

Since she’s a black sheep too, it’s rather ironic and funny that she didn’t recognize me. Or maybe it made perfect sense.

This family has been through the meat grinder. There has been a lot of mistrust and misunderstanding along the way. There’s been way too much sickness and death. We’re not special in that regard. Every family has a deep reservoir of drama.

I don’t think the wedding did much to change the family dynamics. The people who are not on speaking terms need a lot more than a family wedding to resolve the overwhelming tangle of misfiring wires.

But everyone getting along in the same space showed that despite everything, despite the divisions, everyone still fundamentally loves each other. That’s important, because as one of the refrains in the second reading of the wedding ceremony made plain, you can have everything in the world. But if you don’t have love, you have nothing.

I’ve had a lot of love and blessings in my life in the last few years. I’ve come far in overcoming addictions and mental illness. Even the family discord has served a purpose.

My Uncle Bobby, the last of the siblings that included my grandmother, took me aside at one point and said life is too short to hate.

He is absolutely right.

But hate has nothing to do with it.

Mistrust, hurt feelings and deep disagreements over right and wrong? Absolutely. But not hate.

I still love everyone, and I forgave my mother a long time ago.

So why, you’re probably wondering, can’t we just let the past lie in its grave and move on? Because relationships are deeply complex things, and it is never that simple or easy.

But I let Ma find this blog, and believe me: That was a big fucking step.

I hope it leads to something better.