Yesterday was bittersweet. My sister sent me a text to write our older brother's obit. She had wanted to do it, but a crisis with her adult children interfered. It was also my younger brother's 37th birthday.

The obit was simple, we had a max of 4 lines. XXX, 51, of XXX passed away on January 24, 2015 at UPMC. He is survived by 3 sisters and one brother. Preceded in death by both parents and 1 sister.

Very sad summation of nearly 52 years.

It says nothing of the boy I remember: The boy who helped me up the hill in the side yard while sledding with the dog and our younger sister (ok, he helped by putting a hand on my butt and shoving me). The boy who would put my baby doll's head back on after our cousins tore it off again (and hid the other doll when they visited to keep it safe). The boy who gathered scrap wood and built a refrigerator for my play kitchen. The boy who let Mom and I watch Wizard of Oz on the brand new color TV while he and Dad watched baseball on the black and white TV, and the look on their faces when Mom and I thought Wizard of Oz was all black and white and let them have the color TV (and his laughter many years later when I learned of our error). The boy who would let me have the corner where the door jam and barn door met so I was out of the wind while waiting for the bus. And the 11 year old boy who met me at the corner after school every day to walk me to the foster home and protect me from the bullies, even though he had been home from school for half an hour. The boy who hit me in the head with a rock, requiring 17 stitches.

Teenage years changed him. Our foster sister introduced him to cigarettes and then marijuana. By his 13th birthday he was in reform school for drugs, alcohol and theft. He had several drunk driving accidents over the next couple years, mostly in the same curve where he was going too fast to make it. He brought home a german shepherd pup after a night of drunken partying and had no clue where he got it. I don't know why he took that path, our parents divorce, peer pressure, mom's mental illness, the bigotry we faced over mom's mental illness, or maybe he was self-medicating his own mental illness.

It says nothing of the last 10 years struggle with his health. The middle of the night calls from a doctor in a San Diego hospital wanting consent to perform a procedure, but the doctor could not tell my why my brother needed it or why my brother couldn't give consent himself. The issues in the last few years caused by his alcoholism.

There were times I didn't like him or what he was doing with his life, but I always loved him. 4 lines doesn't seem enough to sum up any one's life, but then again in a life with more failure than success maybe it was enough.

*edited to correct grammar*