Brother Love

October 19, 2020: `The Other Side of the Tracks'

On Sunday, my brother Phil’s 57^th birthday, I helped him move 10 miles from a subsidized apartment

¹

on Chicago’s North Side to another one in the South Loop.

Without the intervention of not-for-profit organizations dedicated to combatting homelessness, I don’t know if Phil would still be alive. But I have little doubt he’d be experiencing the homelessness that has marked most of his 11 years in the Windy City – and many of his adult years overall.

Phil is distinctive in many ways, but the broad outline of his journey is typical of many who experience homelessness: drugs, alcohol, mental health issues, recurring physical peril.

Like others with loved ones in addiction’s grip, I have grappled with what to do, what to say, simply how to be in my interactions with Phil. The central tension has been discernment between “enabling” his addictions and loving him, in a more helpful way, through those demons.

Along the way, I have kept our two other siblings, Judi and Andy, posted on Phil. Both reside near our family’s Boston-area roots and since his 2012 move to Chicago, those updates have usually taken the form of a short text message or a few details woven into a phone call that covers a bunch of other topics.

In October 2020, after spending an hour with Phil, I decided to offer them a longer update via e-mail. As I processed my range of emotions and captured details still fresh in my mind, that e-mail grew into The Other Side of the Tracks, the first of what has become a dozen or so essays since then.

Most are 1,000 to 1,500 words. One, from the 18-hour span that culminated with Phil checking into a substance abuse treatment center in April 2021, runs about 4,500 words.

Shortly after writing The Other Side of the Tracks, Phil told me that I could share our experiences with anyone. One night, folding his clothes in a laundromat and employing a defiantly matter-of-fact tone, he said, “I have nothing to hide.” Since then, while periodically reaffirming Phil’s approval for doing so, I have entrusted these reflections with only a small handful of friends and family members.

Today, in this first installment of Brother Love — the nickname Phil has given me, and which I have likewise assigned to him — I begin to publicly share our journey. It is, by far, the most vulnerable moment I have felt in my nearly four decades of writing for public consumption. My goal is for as much good as possible to flow from the struggles that Phil has endured and, to a much lesser degree, that I have experienced throughout this journey.

Every month or so, I plan to share subsequent Brother Love pieces. May each one offer encouragement to those in similar circumstances and insight to everyone else. It’s all a work in progress…like me, like Phil. If you are moved to do so, please post a comment at the end (or shoot me an e-mail at Matt@InsideEdgePR.com.)

The Other Side of the Tracks
October 19, 2020

“Brazen,” my brother, Phil, says with a tone of admiration.

He is describing my coming over to the other side of the tracks—the railroad tracks that are a stone’s throw from the small tent where he lays his head each night.

On this plot of land, shrouded in a cluster of trees and next to a train station, a highway and so much of civilization, Phil has set up his tent and all of his other worldly possessions. Moments earlier, when I had rung him up on this crisp, damp mid-October Monday night, he was “at home” watching a horror flick on his cell phone.

I am not certain of his precise whereabouts, but from his description a week earlier over the phone, I know I am close. Six weeks earlier, driving him to and from the ER for injuries he sustained falling on railroad tracks, I saw Phil’s previous encampment. It was a mile or two west of here in the abandoned and overgrown, jungle-like backyard of a boarded-up home.

**********

After 54 ½ years on planet Earth, Phil is someone who has turned hiding into an art form—a lifestyle, really.

As for his months-long stay on that previous site, I don’t know whether he was “discovered” or if he skipped out before detection. But of this much I am certain: when it happened, Phil had already scouted out plenty of other locations to hunker down. By now, he must have an internal GPS of dozens of prospective spots.

So, this current patch of God’s green earth, whether it’s owned by the state or the forest preserve district or whomever? It’s merely the latest chapter in my brother’s well-worn, much-traveled homeless-across-America tour. By my count, in the nearly nine years that Phil has lived within a few miles of me, this is at least the sixth location where I have personally seen him lug his homelessness.

The garage next to his first apartment…the wooded area set back from the heavily traveled Chicago’s West Side street…the basement of two homes where he was contracted to perform handyman duties…my office in Downtown Oak Park—twice, 2 ½ years apart, and for a total of four days.

There are surely more that I’ve forgotten or that Phil hasn’t mentioned, and it has all become so commonplace. In fact, when he has had stints at the halfway house, the three-quarters house, the sober recovery house—all along they felt to me, as they must have to Phil, like the aberration, temporary reprieves from his chronic homelessness.

Through it all, he has maintained the daily demands that accompany a heroin-addicted alcoholic who battles depression and other mental health issues. I am well past the stage of debating which words to assign Phil’s status in life. Is he a “victim”? Is he “ill” or are his wounds self-inflicted?

All I know for sure is that he’s my brother, and few people possess the astounding levels of resourcefulness and grit that have carried his body through the hell he’s visited upon himself.

**********

Phil sounds pleasantly surprised when I tell him I have come to visit. He says he will come out of his tent to greet me. A few minutes later, as I am looking around on the side of the tracks in all directions, uncertain quite where to be on the look-out for him, he calls me again.

“I saw the light from your phone, I think,” he says. "Can you see my phone? Look to the east."

I turn around and a few moments later catch the flicker of his phone light.

When we come together, as if on metaphorical cue, a stream of police cars and fire engines blare sirens and speed below the overpass we are standing on. Phil is bundled up in a tan Eddie Bauer coat that is layered over a leather jacket. Black sweatpants, bright red basketball shoes. Bespectacled, salt-and-pepper bearded, a winter cap covering his hair that he's grown out for a year or longer.

After a few paces, he turns toward the south side of the tracks. With care, he alerts me to a few hazards on the way to his tent—especially the downed fence that still has sharp edges pointing skyward. He trains his light on the cuts on his leg marking his first encounter with those jagged edges. Ever resourceful, Phil has threaded a thin warning-layer of string along those spikes.

Another 15 seconds of bobbing and weaving through docile branches and we are at his spot. Strewn water bottles and other assorted garbage litter the area. "That's not me," he points out. Others have been the litter bugs. Another guy has set up camp a short distance away, Phil reports, gesturing toward the nearby darkness. I see no sign of this neighbor, nor am I interested in seeing one.

"Want to get something to eat at McDonald's?" I ask.

He does, and off we trek, over the troublesome downed fence and onto the tracks. "This way," Phil motions to the left, but I overrule him, leading us to the right. "There's an opening up here," I explain, walking eastward along the tracks. He chuckles and asks, “Really?” Not sure if he’s more surprised or impressed with my rapid knowledge in navigating this terrain. 

After 100 feet, angling left down the embankment we go, through an opening in the fence. My van is parked only a few paces away. Just as Phil steps inside, in the back row to my right, his phone rings.

It's our brother, Andy, checking to see how Phil's doing. (I had spoken with Andy just as I embarked on my search for Phil, and he is checking on me as much as on Phil.)

Tugging on a Census 2020 mask that I provide ("Be counted!"), Phil is touched to hear from Andy; he seems a bit overwhelmed that not just one, but both of his brothers have reached out back-to-back. He puts Andy on speaker phone and they catch up briefly. Andy lets Phil know that he can call him any time.

A few minutes later, we are parked at the McDonald's after our drive-thru order of McNuggets and a large chocolate shake. Phil urges me to try one of the nuggets. We sit on a big piece of granite that doubles adequately as a bench on the edge of the parking lot.

We may go a week, a month, or even several months between visits. An easy way to catch up is to show photos from our phones, visual mileposts of what we have been up to.

I show him photos from my daughter's cross-country team; he reciprocates by interrupting the Dire Straits music he'd conjured to show some recent handyman work he'd performed. These moments, when he conveys this pride in his labor and craftsmanship, are hard to reconcile with his self-destructiveness.

We talk about our mom, our dad, and family life growing up. I nudge us toward nostalgia; Phil summons trauma. In more detail than ever before, he tells of the arguments our parents had before their divorce.

There’s the particularly rough hotel visit that I vaguely recall, but which Phil relates in vivid, disturbing detail -- all of which I will spare here.

"You must have blocked it out," he concludes. Maybe I did, and it's also possible his memory is flawed. He does enjoy horror movies. Maybe he’s conflating things? How much does it matter? I honestly don't know, but I think it matters at least a little because Phil goes on this thread further.

He goes back to recalling their fights, which would start when Dad, drunk and late at night, returned home. Those confrontations would end with Dad being "thrown downstairs" by Mom. Phil says this is a literal description, though I find that hard to imagine. Maybe Dad had to sleep downstairs, but for this big 200-pounder to be thrown down there by a woman recovering from a brain aneurysm? I don't think so.

Phil's telling me that one morning, he turns to Mom and asks, "Are you and Dad going to fight tonight?"

"Oh my God," Mom thinks (in Phil's account), "this is really causing him damage."

"You and Andy don't know how bad it was because you slept in the upstairs back bedroom,” he concludes.

Suddenly, my dream from last night pops into my mind, and I share the basic outline: I am on the verge of shooting up heroin for the first time, then ask, "Is there something else I can take instead of this?" I don’t recall what happens next, I tell Phil, whose addiction to heroin the past several years is only the latest in a 35-year journey of almost-unrelenting chemical and alcohol abuse.

I am not trying to preach to him, just to let him know that he'd obviously been on my mind when I went to sleep. Earlier in the day, he had texted about the cold, harsh weather. Could I get him quarters so he could do laundry, get warm clothing cleaned? Blankets soaked. Freezing my ass off, he reports.

I don’t respond to the text for a full 24 hours. I pray to God, "What should I do? What shouldn't I do? What's the loving thing to do? What's enabling? Please keep Phil safe. Please bring him to the end of himself."

My emotions veer: sadness and despair; anger and resentment; heartache and helplessness. Old, familiar feelings. For years, I have been through the wringer with him—through his rehabs, hospitalizations, searching for lost cars, wrestling with whether to loan him $5 here, $10 there, maybe $20 this time?

A turning point was the breakthrough winter night, 21 months ago, when I patiently outwilled Phil through a Chipotle dinner and a few hours of conversation in my office. He finally “got” that I wasn’t going to buy his lies about not being on heroin again—I’d seen a dramatic weight-loss in a two-week span. Within an hour of that confession, he went from “hiding” to confiding—and comfortable enough to shoot up in my presence, my bright red scarf wrapped tightly around his bicep to get the job done.

**********

On this afternoon, the day after his latest texts seeking help—Blankets soaked. Freezing my ass off—I agonize over what words I ought to text back. Mindful that he’s a free agent in this universe, that he’s quite literally made his bed and is sleeping in it, and that he needs to truly want a change for change to happen, I settle on a “compassionate, but gently challenging” response: 

"I'm sorry that you're going through such hardship. Contact Housing Forward yet?"

That's the agency that has rented out a hotel in town and filled it with homeless people. A remarkable godsend for so many, from varying circumstances. I had let Phil know about it three weeks earlier. Unprompted further by me, he had mentioned it to me a few times since then. Each time, I encourage him to look into it, but don’t push. It’s his life; he’s got to want it.

As we sit outside McDonald’s, he brings it up again.

"They'll probably test you," I say, simply.

Huh?

"For drugs. At least, I would think so. But I don't know."

I am not holding my breath that Phil will pursue this potential avenue to a semblance of stability. He's getting by, day by day, finding handyman work from a few local guys and doing it well enough to scrape together enough money to get his daily fix in the city.

Since COVID entered our lives, seven months ago, Phil has been extremely respectful to wear a mask in my presence—and it’s part of his everyday life, especially as he seeks hand-to-mouth employment with relative strangers. He is savvy enough to know he must win their confidence so that he can earn the dollars that he converts into the next batch or two of heroin that keep at bay the horrific specter of “dope-sick” withdrawal.

As Phil frankly says to me on this evening, “My life pretty much revolves around it.” That wasn’t his plan when he got hooked. At first, it was a means to an end—a quicker, “cheaper” way to get the feeling artificially produced by alcohol and other drugs. That short-cut has now put Phil on an unforgiving, punishing, daily treadmill.

Returning to a subject we have discussed lately, I ask, "Thinking about going south when the cold weather sets in?"

“I wouldn't know where to find heroin,” he says. I laugh inside; someone who has managed to be homeless for much, if not most, of his adult life would surely figure out how to score heroin in short order. Anyway, he’s got a reliable connection now, in the city, he says. Utterly flawless logic, I suppose, in his world.

Years ago, I determined that I am not here to convince him to clean up. My role is to be his brother, to let him know that I love him, and that I am available to help him when he’s ready to get the help he needs. I pray that he hits bottom and seeks that help before it’s too late.

Meantime, we recall our shared past. On this night, I kindle his own memory by sharing mine of a make-it-yourself ice cream sundae experience in San Francisco 46 summers ago. That was the time Mom took us four kids, six to 10 years old, and fled across the country to visit relatives and get away from one of Dad’s benders.

After a few moments, the ice cream memory now takes hold in his mind, Phil once again becomes that 8-year-old kid who is thrilled beyond words. “Oh, yeah!” he declares. “Now I remember.”

Seeing him revisit that top-of-the-world emotion may be my favorite moment all night.

**********

As he slurps down the last of the chocolate shake on this 40-degree night, I take a few photos of Phil. For years, just about every time we meet up, this is something I do. Each time, I cannot help but wonder: "Is this the last photo I'll ever have? Are these my last moments with my brother?"

A few minutes later, van parked again on that quiet street, we amble to the edge of a parking lot. It serves as the entry point to his home on the other side of the tracks.

To this point, beyond an incidental bump here or there, our bodies have not come into contact. As our time together winds down, masks on, we do what we always do.

Through muffled masks, we say, "I love you, brother” and embrace.

In the end, we each go our own way.

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1. To be clear: in this case, “subsidized” means Phil does not pay any rent. The game plan of the agency that housed him from mid-May 2021 through this past Sunday was that Phil would gradually cover more of the rent as time went on. It didn’t work out that way. At his new place, my understanding is that there is no rent payment expected.