I'd been waiting for the call. Not waiting, really. More like expecting. Anticipating.
Dreading. After years of wonder, worry, effort, calls, emails, requests,
research, desperation, I got the call.
My brother was dead.
What?
My brother, Greg, was a HUGE part of
my life for 39 years - in the spotlight, playing a main character in my life's
play. For the other six, he was the most important bit part in the wings of my
stage.
As kids, we did all the obligatory
brother-sister things. We wrestled. We laughed. We lay on his bed
and listened to Styx and Boston. We walked to the school bus holding
hands.
As teens, we drove around in his hot
rods with the windows down and the music loud. We went to parties. We
went on double dates. We lay on his bed and listened to Styx and Duran
Duran and the Fixx. We shared confidences. We told lies and made
excuses for each other.
As adults, we raised our families together. We had a successful business together. We made friends together, hosted parties
together, won campaigns together, camped and traveled together, and raised
money for our kids’ elementary school together.
Yeah, we probably fought growing up,
but I don't remember that. I remember a fierce defender, a faultless hero,
a motivator, a friend.
But my brother was plagued by
demons. He had many challenges I
couldn’t see, and many that I could. He
made choices that I couldn’t condone. He
went down a path I couldn’t follow. I
lost what would be the last six years that I could have had with him, and that
has broken my heart from the day I last saw him.
Those last six years have been
mind-bending and heartbreaking. With him
on the East coast and me near the west, the distance between us was not only
metaphorical, but physical. We both
changed. We became different people than
the ones who had wrestled and shared and camped. I was bitter.
He was wounded. I was confused. He was tight-lipped. I questioned what caused this, what could I
have done differently. Did his drinking
cause his poor decisions, or did living with his choices cause him to
drink? Either way, it didn’t
matter. What was done, was done.
I never stopped thinking about
him. At first, my thoughts all turned to
disappointment, and anger, and loss. Disappointment in him. Anger at what he’d done. What I’d lost, what I missed. Tangible things. Psychological things. My dreams.
My plans. My future. I was missing.
(That’s another post.) I didn’t
want to know anything about him. I didn’t
want to hear if he was successful, or if he was not. I didn’t want him to know anything about
me. I asked my mom to maintain a “don’t
ask, don’t tell” approach, putting her in a terribly difficult spot of
impossible neutrality between two parts of her heart.
But, as the years passed, my thoughts
of disappointment and anger and loss turned to feelings of longing and
sorrow. I missed him instead of the
things. When his health turned for the
worse, mom broke her silence and told me that his struggle with alcohol had
become a consumer of all he was. He had
lost multiple jobs. He had been in and
out of both medical and rehabilitation hospitals. His wife had asked him to find his own place
to live. He’d been warned that one sip
of alcohol could be fatal, based on the severe pancreatitis he had developed. Suddenly my own recent history with Greg became
nothing but a wisp of some past life and was suddenly of very little
importance. Greg’s health became my
priority.
Over the last two years, I took an
active, albeit back-seat, role in researching intervention programs, pestering
various family members for information.
I bet they got tired of my emails and texts asking, “What’s the latest
on Greg?” When I walked into my parents’
apartment in April, 2014, and heard my dad say, “Greg’s on the phone . . .
Greg, do you want to talk to Sharon?”, my gut reacted as if it had just
experienced its first MMA fight. I
curled into myself. Sweat beaded on my
forehead, my knees became weak, I felt faint.
I’d been so afraid to talk to Greg over the years. I knew that he needed to heal and I was so
worried that speaking to me, the seeming cause of his troubles, could send him
off into a downward spiral. I knew he
needed to heal physically and mentally before he could come to terms with what
had happened, and that he would reach out to me (make amends, so to speak),
when he was ready. I was not about to
upset that process. So, I said, “No,”
and quickly left the apartment.
A few weeks later, I got a call on
my cell phone from an unknown Virginia number.
Since I didn’t know who it was, I let it go to voicemail, listening
quickly after the message recorded.
There was nothing but dead air space, so I deleted it.
In June, after hearing that Greg was
heading into yet another rehabilitation program, I had doubtful hope that this time
would be different. After all, it was
voluntary. It was out of state. It was inpatient. He would spend the month of July in
Nevada. Mom gave me his phone number and
address so that I could reach out after he came home at the end of July.
A few days after his return home,
Greg’s wife shared with mom that Greg had showed up at her house drunk. He hadn’t even made it five days. Everyone tried to reach out to him – except me. My fears of exacerbating the situation caused
me to maintaining my active role from the shadows. Until August 6. After no one had been in contact with him for
at least five days, I called the Bladensburg Police Department and asked them
to do a welfare check. They called me
after their visit and explained that he was home and promised he would contact
family soon. And, he did. He left an angry voice mail on my mom’s
machine with his surprise and disappointment that, after all these years
without contact, this is the first thing I would do. She responded that, if he chose not to answer
or return our calls, texts, or emails, what choice were we left with. I believe that was, sadly, the last time my
mom heard his voice.
Dave and I were planning to go away
for our anniversary and discussed taking a trip to Virginia instead, throwing
caution to the wind, and showing up at his door. Those old fears crept in, though, and we
chose not to go, heading instead to Jackson Hole, one of our favorite places,
and one we frequently traveled to with Greg and his family. Before we left, I mailed Greg a card, telling
him that I loved him, that I was looking forward to the day that we could
reconnect and talk again.
When we returned, I cleaned out my
phone’s old data. When I looked at
deleted voice messages, I saw one from Greg Foster. It was dated April 22. I realized that, when I’d entered his contact
information, the phone had linked it to that unknown Virginia number. Remembering that there had just been dead
air, I decided to listen again to be sure.
There was his voice.
“Hey,
Sharon. It’s Greg. Umm . . it is about 9:30 my time here on the
East coast. Umm, I just wanted to let
you know that I love you. And I’m
thinkin’ about you daily. Umm, I would
love to reconnect, so when you are comfortable and ready, umm, please give me a
holler. Again, my little sister, I love
you. And, umm, I’m doing well from the health-side right now, umm, and just
trying to reconnect. Umm, so again, hope
your evening’s going well, and I’ll be up another couple hours if you feel like
calling back tonight or whenever you’re comfortable. Bye.”
After taking a day to let that soak
in and listening to the message a hundred plus more times, I called him back on
Monday, August 25. It went straight to
voice mail. I told him about the mix up
with the voice mail, and how sorry I was that I didn’t receive it sooner so
that I could have called him back. I let
him know, again, that I loved him, and hoped that we could talk soon. I immediately sent the same information in a text.
“Hi
Greg. It’s Sharon. I just left you a voice mail, too. Your message from a few months ago must not
have come through right away because I just found it yesterday when I was
cleaning out my old messages. I would
love to reconnect. Thank you for calling
me. It meant the world to me. I’ve
missed you so much. Please call when you
have a chance. I love you. I hope you got the card I sent a couple of
weeks ago.”
The next night, I sent him another
text.
“Hi.
Me again. Just seeing if it’s a
good time to visit. :)”
Wednesday, I sent my standard “What’s
the latest on Greg?” message to the family.
It was August 27, and he hadn’t returned anyone’s messages in several
weeks, including his wife’s and kids’.
He had missed his daughter’s and oldest son’s birthdays. He had missed his 25th wedding
anniversary. His wife’s only means of
tracking him was by his debit card purchases which, she admitted, included
liquor store purchases. She was
considering driving to his place that weekend to check on him. She had asked her oldest son to stop trying
to help.
Everyone had reached their own respective
tolerance levels at different points.
Gary was exhausted, physically, mentally and financially tapped, and had
nothing left to give. Elizabeth had
tried over and over again and, after seeking help from a past addict, was
admitting there was nothing left that she could try. Mom and dad were at a total loss and seemed
paralyzed by their fear and lack of knowledge and understanding. Kim couldn’t let her children go through any
more emotional turmoil.
I’d had enough. Screw downward spirals. Screw privacy and history. I was either calling the police again or flying
out there. I spent the afternoon and
evening looking at flight options. After
a summer full of vacations, I had neither the time off or the money available,
but I was so far beyond caring. We were
at critical mass. I was panicked, and
truly believed that if someone did not make contact soon, we would be getting a
call that he was gone.
The next morning, I continued my
search for flights, contacted an interventionist in Virginia, and sat distractedly
through my standard Thursday morning meeting.
Mom
called at 11:48 a.m. Since my meeting
was just about to end, I let it go to voice mail. A minute later, one of my coworkers came in
and whispered, “Your mom just called. It’s
an emergency and she needs you to call her right away.” And that was it.
“Mama. What’s wrong?”
“Honey,
I just got a call from Kim.”
“Mama. No.”
“Yes,
honey. The police were called to his
apartment and they found him inside.
They say he’d been gone for several days. I don’t have any more details.”
“Oh,
mama. No.”
The
next few hours are nonexistent. Somehow,
I managed to drive to Brian’s school and pick him up, drive home and get Sarah,
get to mom and dad’s while the kids were at the emergency room (that’s another
post). We stopped keeping track of
time. The next two weeks have seemed
like one very long day. Many things were
made. Calls. Reconnections.
Plans. Travel arrangements. Professions of love. Admissions of misplaced guilt. A memorial
invitation.
Information
came in shifts. The Tuesday after we
learned of Greg’s death we found out that it was ruled a massive heart attack. That was a blessing because we knew he hadn’t
suffered alone following some other medical emergency. He had advanced liver disease and severe
damage to his pancreas. His blood
pressure was extremely high because he hadn’t been taking his medications
regularly. His cat was with him,
presumably hungry, and we’re guessing made a lot of noise to try and call
attention to the fact that it was well past dinner time. Someone had called the police. He had been found inside, having fallen in
such a way as to confirm his death had been instantaneous. Estimates place his death at five to seven
days prior to his being found.
That
means he was gone when I called. His
phone went to voice mail because the battery had run out. My panic was likely due to me instinctively
knowing he had to be found – I just hadn’t articulated that he was already
gone.
The
day after we found out Greg died, our friends took us to a Lynyrd Skynyrd
concert that we’d had tickets to for months.
Many members of their band have been lost over the years, and their encore
performance was Freebird in honor of
those lost. The visuals included
beautiful photography of doves in flight.
I felt a sudden and overwhelming sense of loss for my brother, and was
completely overcome by emotion. His
younger son just got a tattoo of a dove with a halo. I will forever remember my brother as a
beautiful dove, now flying free.
I’ve
spent the last two weeks gathering, scanning, cropping and editing photos of
Greg throughout his life, and collecting song suggestions from family to
compile into a video memorial. The
simple task of it has been cathartic, mundane, technical.
The idea of it is numbing. I'm memorializing Greg's 50 years into what will seem a few short minutes. We
leave Thursday to attend Greg’s memorial where we will play the video. I cannot imagine saying goodbye. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him in 2008. I’m not ready now. I’m so grateful that I believe this physical life
is just one stop on our journey, and that we will meet our loved ones again
once our time here is done. I cannot
wait for another Greg-Hug.
Hug
the people God gave you. Because, one
day he will want them back.
In
loving memory
Gregory
Carl Foster
1963-2014
