journal entry - 1/25/02

		Friday, 25 January 2002

I am very distressed right now. My brother has moved out once again. I talked with him and my nephew yesterday. My nephew sounded alright, but how knows what kind of effect this will have (or is having) on him. My brother e-mailed me on Tuesday and told me he had moved out the previous Sunday. I was in New York at the time. I talked with my sister-in-law last week and she said they were not doing so well. It really doesn't surprise me, after talking with her, that he moved out, although it does distress me.

I know he needs support, but what kind of support can I give him? I don't know. It may be the kind of support that he actually needs, but not the kind he wants. I just don't know. It was very uncomfortable for me to talk with him last night. I'm probably not going to be able to be the kind of brother he WANTS right now, maybe not, maybe so. All I can do is be me and what I feel is right for the moment and what will help in the future. If I honestly thought that both of them had done everything they could do to salvage and restore their marriage and they still came to this point, then fine. I don't like it, but they tried. I'm not at all convinced, especially concerning my brother, that they did everything, or even much of anything, to change their condition, their way of relating, of seeking help, of admitting individual failure and doing something about it. As a result, my little nephew will bear the brunt.

He is my concern. He is innocent. He is a child. Whatever the two parents do, they do of their own volition, their own decision. They are not innocent. There is no physical abuse. There is no real psychological abuse between the two of them. What is their real excuse? Not a convenient or contrived excuse, but what is the real excuse?

My parents will be devastated, especially my Dad, because they live for their grandson (especially my Dad). If they divorce, it will never be the same for them and their grandson -- it is just the way these things turn out. My sister-in-law will have my nephew and her family will continue on and become his primary grandparents. If or when she remarries, my parents will only be, what?, a periphery relationship to him. I hope and pray that isn't the case, but normally it is. The break-up of my brother and sister-in-law's relationship does not just effect the two of them, and then their son, but other's as well. I know they cannot live in a bad situation for the sake of an extended family. If I believed they had tried all they could to restore their marriage, fine, but I don't think they have (at least not mutually).

This is just very hard right now. I don't know what is going to happen, nor how I am going to be able to respond. I'm not going to make very many people very happy, I don't think. That really bothers me, as well.

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