He Is My Brother's Son

Not Zach, but kinda like.

I have a nephew, Zach, whom I care about a lot. He’s my half-brother’s son, and though he’s 24 years my junior, he’s always seemed more like a kid brother to me. Because of the peculiar circumstances of our childhood, my brother and I had never been close. Despite spending long periods of time growing up under the same roof, our relationship had been engineered toward estrangement from an early age. 

When Zach was born in 1985, I had already been banished from our small town for a number of years. I hadn’t been in touch with the family much beyond a phone call home now and then to confirm proof of life. I’d made one brief trip home during that time for reasons I’ve forgotten. I met Zach for the first time when he was about 4. 

It would be several more years before I’d go back, and by then I thought surely he wouldn’t remember me from before. But when I got there, his eyes got big and he ran across the room and gave me a big hug. This sweet little guy, who had somehow remembered me. I had not expected to be remembered by these people. 

Not Zach

He became special to me at that moment. I’ve been protective of him ever since. 

* * *

Over the decades, from as far back as I can remember, my brother Chris had struggled with his own personality disorders, spending long years unemployed and subsisting by ambiguous means. Zach’s mother, my sister in law, held a good job on the Andrews campus and was well known and respected by her friends and colleagues. She was outwardly functional, but living with my brother was no picnic — he’d left her for another woman at least once in the course of their marriage — and she had demons of her own. She’d made troubling allusions of sexual abuse in her childhood, though she would never put names or dates or anything specific to it. She had begun using opioids.

Not their living room, but...

Both my brother and sister in law were hoarders. Their house was a disaster. Growing up, Zach had never been able to bring friends home. As an only child, he grew up in relative isolation.

Over the years, as my brother’s jobs fell away and his marriage deteriorated and the money got tight, my parents took on more and more responsibility for meeting Zach’s needs. There were periods of time that he stayed with them. They were buying a lot of the things he needed from day to day. Things weren’t so bad at home that Zach didn’t have food or a roof over his head, but things were shaky and there was always a sense of barely eking by. 

My parents were a source of stability throughout Zach’s childhood, so it’s not surprising that his life at that time followed a similar trajectory as mine: He went to the same Adventist Academy that I had attended some 20 years earlier, had some of the same teachers. He went to their churches, grew up in the same culture. Like me, Zach grew up in my parents’ house, he was taught their values, and he developed some of same behaviors, both good and bad.

Like this, but not as smiley.

That’s why my nephew is more like a kid brother to me, raised in the same community, in the same house, by the same parents. I’ve been to his graduations, his wedding, to his divorce and its aftermath. I was there when both his parents died. 

And it was Zach who sat with me in my parents’  empty apartment, staring through an iPad at my dad in the hospital as we tried to offer him words of comfort. He was on the Covid unit and we couldn’t visit. I don’t know if he heard us. A nurse was holding an iPad up to his face. He wasn’t responsive. We didn’t tell him Mom had already died. 

* * * 

After his divorce, Zach moved to Florida to stay with them.  It seemed like a good idea at the time — divorced, broke and newly jobless, he needed a place to stay, a new environment and a fresh start. They were in their 80s and still independent, but they liked the idea of Zach being there. It was a win-win, right?  

The fighting started almost immediately. 

Like this, but way louder.

It wasn’t surprising. Our family was a seething cauldron of old grudges and festering resentments, so it wasn’t exactly breaking news when the fireworks started. The details of these skirmishes aren’t interesting, but they had begun to escalate in frequency and intensity; I assumed it was only a matter of time before Zach would land a job, save up some cash, and eventually get his own place. 

It didn’t quite pan out that way. It took Zach longer to find work than expected, and when he did find jobs, they didn’t last. There was always some reason why he couldn’t stay. He’s fully certified as a Master Mechanic, but I wasn’t sure why he was moving from one car dealership to another.It was always his decision to leave, he never got fired. Far from it, he’s a good worker, and good at what he does — his supervisors and coworkers seem to like him.  But something would always happen and he’d be unemployed again. And as the weeks turned into months, tensions at home grew. 

“Why don’t you just get your own place,” I asked him at one point. I’d spent the last hour listening to him gripe about how unreasonable his grandmother was about everything. For the record, he wasn’t wrong about this; I didn’t point out that he can be pretty bull-headed, too. 

“I don’t have any money to get my own place,” he’d tell me. It was a common refrain. Zach’s money problems were already legendary, and his grandmother had always been there for him with infusions of hard-earned money she really didn’t have. 

“This is why we get jobs and work for a living,” I told him. And to his credit, he would always get another job, at another car dealership, for another few weeks. 

It might have gone on like this forever, but then my parents did something sudden and completely unexpected: They died. 

And in that moment, my isolated, troubled, and very much beloved Zach became an orphan. A homeless orphan. More precisely, whether either of us liked it or not, he became my homeless orphan.

* * *

When my brother turned 21, he bought himself a car. It was a beautiful machine, a tricked-out 1976 lemon yellow Camaro. He was too young to have any real credit, so after weeks of negotiating and solemn promises to make the payments on time each month, our Mom co-signed the loan for him. 

Dunno, could have been this one? 

Chris loved that car. Sometimes I wold ride along with him he when he cruised Fairplane Plaza on Saturday nights. I was only 16, not fully legal yet, but sometimes he’d let me drive. For a minute, I was cool.

Which was why it was so crushing, three months later, when the car was repossessed for non-payment. He never made a single payment. 

It was a harsh lesson for my brother and, for that matter, my mom. She hadn’t realized the car payments weren’t being made until the car was gone, and by then it was too late. Chris’s credit rating was ruined, and now so was hers. 

* * *

I thought about this recently as Zach and I had breakfast at Cracker Barrel one Saturday morning. This is a thing with us, breakfast on the weekend, a way to touch base and check in. 

It was something we’d started after my parents passed away. We hadn’t meant to make a ritual of breakfast on Saturdays, but after they died, we were both feeling somewhat orphaned. 

Zach’s grandparents had carried no debt, but they also hadn’t left much in the way of material possessions. They’d had enough in their bank account to pay off their remaining bills and that was about it. The only other asset they owned was their 2017 Honda CRV, which they had paid off entirely. 

It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t something. I knew Zach already had his pickup truck to drive, but he was going to need some money to get his own place. I gave him their car, which he sold for nearly twenty grand. I was relieved that he had enough money for rent & security deposit on his own place.  

About three months later, he traded in his truck and a sizable portion of the money from their car into a BMW convertible. He’d shown his then-girlfriend a pretty good time, bought her some jewelry. I think there were a couple of weekend getaways. 

Three month after that, he was urgently texting me because the job wasn’t panning out, he was about to be evicted from his apartment for non-payment, and the car had been repossessed. The girlfriend was no longer in the picture. 

* * *

This is why we pay our bills.

Usually Zach and I meet at the restaurant, but not that day. Instead, I drove to his apartment and picked him up. Afterwards, I drove him to the grocery store and we ran a couple of his errands. I didn’t lecture him on personal responsibility, or tell him how stupefyingly dumb it was to be in his position. On some level, we know these things about ourselves already.   

Zach knew I couldn't give him any more money. I couldn't buy him another car, or cosign on a loan that won’t be paid back. In a weird way, offering Zach money at this particular time in his life would be a bit like offering me a drink. It might be well intended, but it’s actually part of the problem. 

And it's beyond maddening. It would be so very like me to simply write Zach out of my life at this point. To not answer the phone, not reach out, not be there. It would be so easy to “ghost” him like I do everyone else. It’s what I did to his dad for most of our lives. It’s what I did to all of them. It’s how I survived. 

Zach knew he'd screwed up good this time, and that I couldn't fix it for him. I wasn't able to bail him out. There was no easy solution. It was a painful conversation, but you know what? We both showed up for it. We’re both still showing up. 

For these two particular orphans, that’s pretty fucking huge. 

Anyway. It took awhile, but yesterday Zach bought a used clunker with his own money. He poo-poohed it, but there was something new in his tone and demeanor I can’t quite put words to. Satisfaction? With this shitty little used car? 

It needs a little work, but...

 

My nephew is, at times, so very like his father. Chris and I struggled to relate throughout much of our lives. I find now that my relationship with his son has its roots in that struggle, and those roots are strong.  

I stop caring much too easily. I drop people like stones I no longer want to carry. I walk away. I stop answering. It’s my signature move. 

I haven’t walked away from Zach. I haven't stopped answering. Maybe we’re both growing up.