Skip to main content

Eulogy for my brother Eli

eli2

NOTE: One year after my brother Eli's death in 2014, I published a book about the intertwining of our lives and his struggle with schizophrenia. This post and many other writings are included, in slightly different form, in that book.
Please wait until the ride has come to a full and complete stop is now available in print and Kindle editions.


Through laughter and tears, I invite you to come share my final journey with my brother.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once upon a time, a family went to Disney World… and the little boy got lost. The father couldn’t find him, and, in the most exciting development of his big sister’s life, actually left without him. Her head spun with all the wonderful possibilities. “No brother!” But, like Hansel, he found his way back to the campground and her hopes were crushed. Life with a brother – what a pain.

Seventeen months apart, we were two halves of the same person.  Curled up under the blanket, we’d pretend we were twins waiting to be born.  We’d switch clothing and try to trick everybody (nobody was ever fooled).  We finished each other’s sentences, read each other’s mind, used deaf-blind sign language to talk to each other silently in shul.  I bragged to my friends about his math, and he bragged to his that I slept with a dictionary beside my bed.

My mother has pictures to prove that I was physically older, but by age 2, he’d caught up … and shot on ahead. I can't remember a time when Eli wasn't the leader — stronger and bigger and smarter.  Defending me from the worms in the garden. Teaching me about the world.  Tutoring me in French so he wouldn't know something I didn't.

As a toddler, he and my mother were standing in front of a toy store window when some people passing by stopped. One of them said, “Look, it’s Mr. Mouth!” And my mother thought, “How do they know Eli?” But no, there in the window was a game called Mr. Mouth.

How could he shut up, where there was so much to say?

My own children never got to see that side of him. Except Jeremy.

Eli was his first babysitter, when Jeremy was 6 weeks old. Kind, attentive… talkative; Eli was also perhaps the reason he spoke so early.  Eli snuggled, sang, kept track of the pacifier, fed him the right stuff, reported minutiae about the baby’s routine, bragged about his progress.

But, of course, Jeremy wasn’t Eli’s first baby. When Sara came along, Eli was the one who told me not to touch her on the head. (As a result, I didn’t touch her head until she was well into her 20s.)

When Sara was a baby, my mother would leave her sleeping in a large antique-style carriage. One day, Eli started rocking the carriage back and forth, shouting “BOOM-boom,” “BOOM-boom!” He had read that the sound of a heartbeat would comfort a baby… and when you’re in the womb, he told me, that heartbeat must be pretty loud.

And when Abigail arrived... he knew she was special.  In Catcher in the Rye, the main character is obsessed with his little sister. Holden buys a record for Phoebe; he reads her diary; he turns to her for advice because she is purer than everybody else in the world. That was Abigail.

Those little girls were his warmth and light in a very, very cold world. Over the last few years, Sara became his best friend. Often, she was his only friend, and a reliable spot to drop in downtown at very strange hours.

My mother also, despite his complicated feelings about her, was always a beacon for him. He knew he could count on her for a meal, for sympathy, for money.

A few years ago, my mother’s Chanukah party was shattered when he wandered in, yelling. He was full-on crazy, smelly, and bedraggled. Ted slammed the door in his face and locked it, as he continued to shout, while inside, the rest of us tried to carry on celebrating.

He could be scary, but he never hurt anybody.

Sometimes, his gentleness amazed me, given the demons he was wrestling with.  He loved buying jewellery for the kids; he loved finding and bringing gifts – following in my Zeidy’s footsteps with his “found in the trash” treasures.

So no, my brother never hurt anybody… unless you count the family members who had no idea how to keep him safe.

Today, there are no institutions for people like Eli. We try to integrate them into our community instead, through supportive housing, shelters, and the fine arrangement my brother often settled on:  living under a bridge. Except the underside of bridges can get a little cold here in Canada. 

Sometimes, there are happy endings in mental illness, even in schizophrenia.

But Eli's brilliant mind was so very broken.

Zale said something important last night: we have to forgive ourselves for how we treated Eli. Sometimes, there was no "good" way to treat him.  Like the time when, after he’d escaped from the hospital, I helped arrange a police sting to catch him, hating myself for betraying his trust, but also hating him for making us do it over and over and over.

Even when the drugs worked, offering us the relatively good times that passed for normalcy, they made him slow-witted, hitting the disease over the head like a sledgehammer.  While some of us might welcome the release from pain, Eli saw clearly how they obliterated him as well.

He had so much to share, and his mind was so very agile.

So very special.

 eli4 It’s hard to say when I lost my brother. As a person who loved precision, it would probably drive him crazy that we don’t know when he died… and yet, that is the way this disease sometimes takes people: not all at once, at a set date and time, but little by little, breakdown by breakdown, hospitalization by hospitalization, bridge by bridge.

There are few people as desperately in need of peace as Eli was in his last years. We have lost a brother, a son, an uncle, a friend… but he has found peace. And he is teaching us still, through the hands-on lessons in compassion, forgiveness and patience that came with nearly every encounter over these last few years.

Let us remember the giver, the sharer, the teacher. His smile, his shoulders, his hugs. His patient hands patting a baby to sleep; his nimble fingers dancing over the piano keyboard. My brother, Eli.

Feel free to read previous posts about my brother Eli.

Comments

  1. HaMakom yinachem eschem b'soch she'ar avlei tzion v'rushayalim. I feel just the merest hint of what your family must be going through. You are a good sister.

    Love,
    Yael

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tzivia and Family,

    My sympathies on your loss היה
    זכרון ברוך

    ReplyDelete
  3. Praying for peace and blessings on you and your family.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am so sorry for your loss. Wishing you healing and comfort at this difficult time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Keep the memories coming! Its obvious how much you loved your brother.

    Consider this a virtual shiva call. Hamakom Yinachem Otach Betoch Shaar Avelei Zion V'Yerusalayim.

    ReplyDelete
  6. So very beautifully written. Prayers from across the sea... Sylvie

    ReplyDelete
  7. מן השמיים תנוחמו ולא תוסיפו לדאבה עוד

    What an beautiful tribute you have written for your brother. May the good memories color the more difficult ones with love.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Beautiful post.
    So a terrible illness.
    Hamakom yenachem to all of you.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I cannot begin to know what you went through with your brother. This was a beautiful to him. I'm so sorry for your loss.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I am so grateful to all those of you who stopped by and left a comment. It is very appreciated. I'm not done talking about mental illness. Even though Eli is no longer suffering, there is still so much that needs to be said, and so many still to be comforted.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Beautiful eulogy for your brother. I am sorry to hear of your loss and may Hashem comfort you and your family during this time.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @Kathleen, that means so much. I feel I have totally lost touch with many people this year. :-/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

It's Heart Month: 3 days left to save lives!

Dear Friends & Family: Hi, everybody! Sorry I can’t stop by in person... you're a bit out of my area.  :-) We’re out walking up and down on our street on this beautiful afternoon to raise money for Heart & Stroke.  This cause is important to me (I won't say it's close to my heart , because that would be tacky!).  I hope you'll join me by donating online. Growing up, I watched as every single one of my grandparents' lives were shortened by heart disease and strokes, and my father had a defibrillator that saved his life on more than one occasion.  Heart disease and stroke kill 1 in 3 Canadians and are the #1 killer of women. Please click this link to be redirected to my main page at the Heart & Stroke website: http://tinyurl.com/AtlasHeart Thus ends my personal appeal.  Official information follows.  :-))) ----- Heart disease and stroke is the #1 killer of women - taking more women's lives than all forms of cancer combined. But no one is immune. Th