Brother Love: Super 8 Sequester

Before going to the Haymarket Center: The Gospel of John, Blood Sweat & Tears, `Quantum Leap guy' & more swigs of Western Son vodka

This is the fourth and final segment of a four-part series, chronicling the 18 hours preceding my brother Phil's checking in to the Haymarket Center, a substance abuse rehabilitation facility in Chicago.

Below, the narrative picks up from around 6 p.m. on the evening of Saturday, April 10, 2021. After running errands for about 90 minutes, I have just returned to the motel room.

[To review the first three parts, check out my archives from July 12, July 15 and July 19.]

**********

It will be roughly three hours before our first sleeping shift kicks in.

In the interim, I try to be as productive as possible. With the electric razor that I packed, I trim Phil’s beard as he lies in bed—it’s not nearly as neat as the trim that he got in conjunction with the hallelujah haircut last month, but at least it’s $7 cheaper.

My ongoing focus is to ply Phil with water, doled out in small portions from a big blue jug that I filled at home and lugged to the motel. My strategy isn’t to prevent Phil from drinking alcohol so much as to get him to load up so much on water that it reduces his desire for the booze.

Shortly before 9 p.m., Phil grabs the Gospel of John booklet that he has been reading of late—a fact that I deduce by his repeated references to Jesus and his disciples being “bad-asses” who, well, kicked ass.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the book only a few inches from his bespectacled eyes, Phil begins at the beginning:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”

I have never seen Phil initiate a Bible reading. I am his Amen Corner, amazed at and encouraged by this development.

A few minutes later, we are onto other topics—including the final days of Dad’s life 13 years ago, when all four of us kids gathered around him in Florida. Reflecting on that time opens newfound understandings for each of us.

Phil lets me know he was going through alcohol withdrawal—which helps me see why he seemed to always be on the periphery of our interactions with Dad in his hospice room. What I had seen as aloofness—the memory of Phil splayed across a couch is my enduring memory of him back then—was largely a matter of my big brother coping with pain.

Then, Phil expresses irritation at the memory of me, Andy and Judi reading the Bible to Dad so much in those final days. In response, I make it clear that we weren’t forcing it on Dad, but that he had developed a hunger for hearing Scripture.

Once he knew his time on Earth was drawing to a close, I explain, Dad had done a 180-degree turn from his longstanding indifference to all things Biblical. Repeatedly, he asked us to read from the Bible, and Judi, Andy and I took turns doing so.

Phil is astonished.

“I didn’t know that!” he exclaims. “That gives me a whole new perspective.”

Phil’s place in the family has long been on the fringes: something as logistically simple as having a bedroom in the basement of our home, away from all our bedrooms up the flight of stairs; and something as heartbreakingly complicated as his homeless stretches across the country for the past few decades.

Even in our interactions with Dad at the end, Phil was situated on the fringes. That distance led, in both directions, to misinterpretations, misunderstandings, judgments and resentment.

Amazing, what we are learning by spending a little time together.

*******

At one point, Phil asks if I like him.

“Yes, I like you.”

He challenges my answer with a simple follow-up: “Why?”

“In addition to being my brother, you’re funny and you’re caring. You’re smart, kind and thoughtful.”

He seems satisfied with the response, accurately gauging it as genuine. Not only that, but he doubles down on his value. “I tell people when they meet me: I am the most wonderful person you are ever going to meet.”

Somehow, it doesn’t come across as egotistical or narcissistic. Maybe it’s the Wizard outfit.

*******

Our common ground in musical tastes extends to Blood Sweat & Tears, so I cue up “Lucretia MacEvil” as Phil bemoans that BS & T lead singer David Clayton-Thomas doesn’t get nearly enough credit.

As Phil looks on from bed, grinning at my performance, I provide bad, boisterous singing, amateur air guitar-playing and finger-fluttering faux-trumpet-tooting.

*******

Somewhere around 1:30 or 2 a.m., Phil wakes up—then wakes me up with some running commentary on one random topic or another. The TV is on, though I had turned down the sound so that I could fall asleep earlier. Phil asks for some volume.

Kindergarten Cop had been playing earlier, but now NCIS New Orleans is playing on TNT and is evidently on some loop. The same episode from a few hours ago is again on the screen—a car bomb wipes out one guy, there’s a massive gun battle between good guys and bad guys, and I deduce something about a heart needing to be pulled out of one body so that it can be inserted into another young guy’s body.

It’s past 2:30 a.m. when Phil refers to lead actor Scott Bakula as “Quantum Leap Guy,” a nod to his starring role in that time-travel series back in the 1980s. I just want to quantum leap to The Haymarket, with Phil walking through the door.

*******

Sleep returns somewhere around 3 and we’re up well before 7. Phil’s first order of business is locating his last bottle of booze.

“I don’t want to be in withdrawal before getting there,” he says.

Western Son remains a fixture in Phil’s diet — here he shops last month at his favorite liquor store.

It takes him a minute or two, but he fishes out the Western Son Vodka—to his relief. It’s to my relief, too: I am fine with him getting buzzed, especially if it is part of the larger plan of checking into The Haymarket. He mixes it with the orange juice that I had brought from home, and we’re soon on our way.

Wheels are turning by 7:45 and a few minutes later I dial up Phil’s friend, Bill, who was his counselor at the Way Back Inn and had opened up his apartment to Phil for a week leading up to this past Christmas. Bill encourages Phil, tells him he’s proud of him, and urges him to give The Haymarket at least a few days.

Phil and I both pick up on something else: Bill sounds more than a little buzzed. “Are you drunk, Bill?” Phil asks.

Bill either doesn’t hear the question or doesn’t want to answer it. That’s fine with me; explaining that I need the phone to navigate to The Haymarket, I hustle the call to an end.

We get to The Haymarket around 8:15. Phil steps out to have a smoke. He still has about five ounces of his vodka-and-OJ and doesn’t want to waste it. I have no doubt that it will be fully consumed, even if it means Phil smuggling it inside detox.

I check at the front door with a security guard—yes, Phil can come inside and wait in a seating area until the nurse arrives to check on new intakes. That will be over an hour away, a fact that I don’t feel compelled to share with Phil when I find him outside.

One last hug, and Phil goes inside.

I thank God for getting him there. I hope and pray for the best, for Phil to turn his life around, and to gain freedom from substance abuse. I can’t control any of that, and I won’t allow future events to shape how I view this 18-hour slice of life with my brother.

No matter what unfolds, I am grateful for our Super 8 Sequester.

Epilogue

Within 72 hours of this experience with my brother, I wrote the 4,500-word narrative that became this four-part series.

Phil succeeded in remaining for the entire month that was the goal when he entered Haymarket Center. Being in the program opened the door for him to gain a subsidized (free) apartment in Chicago. He remained in that apartment for nearly two years, then moved to his current apartment 2 1/2 months ago.

Life is still extraordinarily hard for Phil, a prisoner of his alcoholism and heroin addiction. A panhandling routine, which he refers to as his “daily humiliation,” funds those expenses.

Last month, Phil is stationed at the intersection where he has done most of his panhandling the past few years. He refers to it as his “daily humiliation.”

I am continually astonished by his fierce will to live; I am likewise heartbroken by his march, step by staggering step, along such a self-destructive path.

Meantime, I maintain hope. I have faith to believe that Phil can choose recovery again—and for good, one day, one moment, at a time. When he’s ready.

Over two years ago, he was ready to get help that day outside the Oak Park library, pleading for a lifeline. Through all his drinking that night in the motel room, and the next morning on the way to Haymarket, he stuck to that decision.

And, finally, when he walked through its front door, he didn’t turn back.

I don’t believe he’d have survived much longer without housing. Because of his decision that morning, and his commitment to stick with it over the next 30 days, he is alive today.

Consequently, let me echo those concluding words that I wrote back then, in the immediate aftermath of our time together: No matter what unfolds, I am grateful for our Super 8 Sequester.