You Don't Choose Your Family

"You don't choose your family.  They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."                                                                         Desmond Tutu

      When I was very young, my mother says that a large television almost fell on top of me and Michael saved me from being crushed.  He shielded me with his own body, holding up this massive television set and yelling for help.  Of course, I don't remember this.  
     Now it's my turn to protect him.  Only two years apart, my older brother and I were always very competitive.  We both did well in school, although he excelled more in math while I preferred language arts.  He was an amazing piano player while I loved to sing and dance.  I'll never forget him playing "O Come All Ye Faithful" on the piano for me in the school Christmas pageant when I was in fifth grade.   
     Valedictorian of his elementary school graduating class, my brother set the bar very high for the rest of us.  I knew I could not compete with him athletically, since he was so good at baseball and basketball, and I avoided playing ping pong or board games with him.  He was known to throw the game across the room when he lost.  I preferred to read. 
    We went to single sex Catholic high schools right next door to each other, both earning scholarships to prestigious universities, his in accounting and mine in journalism, and then the competition abruptly ended.  
     When he developed schizophrenia and had to drop out of college, I won by default but I knew it was a hollow victory.  
     Although I have dedicated my life to trying to understand these complicated brain disorders, nothing could stop my brother's downward spiral from private university research hospitals to state hospitals to overcrowded nursing homes.  Most people cannot see his keen intelligence under his rough exterior and accumulated battle scars, but I can occasionally catch glimpses.
     Recently an occupational therapist asked me if Michael understood the directions she had given him on how to put different size pegs into the proper size holes.  Instead he was standing them up on the wooden board, which is actually a much more difficult task of fine motor skills.  
     "Oh, he understands you alright," I replied. "He's just bored and doesn't want to do it."
     He laughed as I challenged him to see who could get more pegs into the right size holes faster.  Our competition isn't over.