What innocent-seeming picture is actually heartbreaking?

This cute little boy ended up being rejected by my mother. Decades later I asked my mom what that was about and she said: “I don’t know, when he got to be three, he got ugly to me.” The other four of us didn’t know that or understand what it was about. He became the family scapegoat, taking mental and physical abuse from the brother three years older and mental abuse from the rest of us. Then my father died when he was eight and my mother moved us 2000 miles away across the country. The family went under stress, but the one brother picked on him.

Then Mom remarried. Her new husband beat him severely. I didn’t know about it as I was involved with my own issues as a 17-year-old. My brother actually crawled under the car to get away from him. Another time my other brother counted him getting hit with a belt 43 times. We can see in the family pictures where he’s bubbly at about twelve then at 13 he’s sullen and withdrawn. The following year, he was involved with drugs.

I got foster papers on him so he could live with me and my wife. It was tough and he got himself in trouble again. Then my marriage fell apart and he quit high school and moved in with some druggies. I moved out of state and he traveled around working and using people including various girlfriends and a lot of get-by jobs.

During one of our family reunions in Salt Lake City, he said he had thought that he could fix his problems himself, but didn’t think so now. I told him there were counselors that helped people with low income. He said he’d look into it when he got back to Seattle. He didn’t as far as I know.

At 35, he was living in a homeless flophouse in Seattle. He’d bought some heroin that came through and it now is infamous as having been pure and uncut. Everyone that used it OD’d. He died on that cot. We all pitched in and had his body flown to Utah where he’s buried. My mother had a Mormon funeral and to her chagrin, I gave a Buddhist one when it was my turn to do his eulogy with the help of my youngest brother and niece.

Such a waste of life for a guy who was so smart and interesting. I saw him, when we were walking in San Francisco, suddenly stop and go down an alley. When he came out, I asked what he was doing? He said there was a homeless guy down there and he’d given him some money. One of his many contradictions.

I miss him and his wit and insight. He literally saved my life a few times. He never found true love. Too afraid. His death was such a waste but from that young age he was rejected. And why? I found out years later it was when my dad had an affair with my mom’s best friend and she had a child by him. That happened when my brother was three and she projected all that on that sweet little boy. Heartbreaking.