How to Help a Fallen Family Member
Step #1: Realize something is wrong.
You’re thirteen years old, and your mom picks you up from a sleepover. As she drives, her forearms tense, a rigid grip on the steering wheel, her eyes flicker between you and the road. The cold morning air seeps into the car, though you expect that from a car that’s as old as you. Your pajama shirt–the one that says “PROUD NERD” around an emoji with glasses and braces–is too thin to keep you warm.
Mom holds you in the corner of her vision as she tells you that Spenser was “admitted into a mental care facility” yesterday. She chooses her words as if she’s playing Operation.
Your oldest brother is in a mental hospital. You don’t have time to figure out how you feel about this new information before you’re on the way to the Lahey inpatient facility an hour later. Remember the name because of how often Spenser mentions Lahey to your parents in the next six years. Sometimes he’ll refer to it as “the psych ward” or “that institution,” but you’ll know what he means.
Years later, with fragile yet calculated words, the family therapist tells you that, during your sleepover, the police arrived at your house. No one was home but your brother Ben. Rather than playing video games and watching The Office after school, he had to call his older brother and tell him to come home. The police waited there until Spenser returned from his college commute. They took Spenser into custody and checked him into Lahey. She tells you that someone reported him as “a danger to himself or to others.”
But you don’t know what happened yet.
Step #2: Be there for him.
Spenser’s hospital room holds less furniture than a college dorm. He has a bed and a closet. You don’t realize that the lack of furniture stops him from killing himself in a creative way.
Join your family in the common area to huddle around a small table and play cards. No one can off themself with a pack of cards, right?
Before your parents check him out of the hospital that Sunday, Mom tells you to be more supportive of your brother, less mean, more gentle. Rather than listening to her, skate between her advice and your nature. You suck at skating though, so you wobble instead. You know you’d offend him by treating him like an antique teacup, the way your parents treat him. Instead, spend more time with him. Don’t stop making cheap jokes at his expense. Show him that nothing’s changed.
Step #3: Don’t fuck up.
According to your high school’s mental health program, he shows signs of suicidal thoughts. At dinner, he talks about the future yet insists that he’ll be dead in a few years. You have two years left in high school, but he doubts he’ll be alive to attend your college graduation. As you take notes, do homework, try to sleep, anxiety scratches at your brain, whispering that, at any moment, your mom could call you. Through an overflow of sobs, you might hear the words “Spenser’s dead.” Sometimes, the fear pins you down, seeps into your veins, and leaves you helpless. Sometimes, you wish he would do it so you won’t have to spend every moment wondering if and when.
You need to do something. You need to save him.
Write him a poem. List all the reasons why he needs to stay alive: your mom, your dad, your brother, you. Most of all, tell him to live for himself.
Don’t ask yourself why a high school kid feels like it’ll be her fault if her brother kills himself. Keep writing. Leave the letter on his bed.
Later, he tells you how much he appreciates the poem. The constrained feeling in your chest does not leave.
Your parents tell you how thoughtful you are. You want them to tell you that everything will be alright.
Step #4: Take care of Mom.
You don’t know what happened the night you were at the sleepover, but you know it might happen again.
When you listen to music at night, pause whenever stray yells sneak through your earbuds. Straighten your spine and listen like a squirrel. Pay attention to who is shouting at whom. You can identify each family member’s echoing voice, but you’re most familiar with hearing Mom and Spenser. In a few years, Ben’s voice will join that chorus.
Listen as you reach for sleep. You won’t be able to translate the muffled remarks, but listen for shouts of pain, choked screams, shattering glasses. If you hear a yelp, lift your head off the pillow and look toward the door. You must detect even the softest sobs. The sobs belong to your mother.
If you hear the arguments peak, stand between her and Spenser. Disregard the fact that violence never comes; hold onto the yet. Don’t let her get hurt. She soaks up such suffering that you don’t think either of you could withstand the physical hurt.
She doesn’t deserve misery. She doesn’t deserve shredded vocal cords after hours of teaching asshole teenagers and correcting math tests. She doesn’t deserve ridicule from the son to whom she devoted twenty-five years of her life.
You’re a kid, a helpless kid. Everything feels out of your control. Do the one thing you can do–don’t create more problems.
Step #5: Make sacrifices.
In the seventh grade, notice how the lines on the board in school fuzz together. Ask Mom to schedule an eye appointment for you. Remind her several times over the next few months, because each time she says she forgot. Don’t blame her; you know she has a lot to remember.
Finally get an appointment scheduled after failing your school eye exam. Now you have glasses to match your braces, and Ben will call you “four-eyes” throughout the next seven years. Sit at the kitchen table as Mom talks to her friend on the phone. Listen to her confess that
every time you asked to get your eyes checked, she ignored it, assumed you were lying, thought you were looking for attention.
Remember that moment. Use it as a punchline for years. Act like you don’t feel your heart twist whenever you think about it for too long. Take as long as you need to forgive her, even if you can’t remember her ever saying sorry.
Step #6: Realize that things will never be “normal.”
Ben’s behavior is strange.
In the car, he covers his ears and screams when there’s a song he doesn’t like on the radio. In the kitchen, he scratches the same spot on the counter over and over. Once, during this ritual, ask him what he’s doing. He yells at you to leave him alone. Never ask again. On the weekends, he opens your bedroom door to say hi. He does this exactly at midnight.
Continue your routine of hearing Mom’s “be gentle” campaign, pretending you’re okay, and never telling anyone that your heart feels like it’s drowning. When you’re not doing AP homework or at tech crew, research OCD.
One Christmas, Ben refuses to open his presents until New Year’s. Your parents ask why. He yells, marches up to his room, slams the door.
Ben stays home from Nana’s on Christmas Day. Your parents and Spenser voice their concerns in the car. Face the chilled window with discreet tears trickling down your face. Put in your earbuds to block out their words.
Five years after the sleepover, the second nature you learned from Spenser infects your thoughts. Images of the variety of methods Ben may use to kill himself flow through your mind: he hangs himself in the garage, slits his wrists in the kitchen, drowns himself in the bathtub, etc. Irrational ideas crawl into your brain.
An hour later, Ben walks through Nana’s front door, pulse intact.
Step #7: Get out & stay away.
“How is it to feel like an only child, huh?” relatives and family friends ask you when Ben starts college. Though Ben’s moving to Philly, Spenser lives at home. Plus, Ben transfers to UMass the next year. After he begs on the phone every Friday, Mom drives three hours to pick him up.
When you go to college, don’t pick a school that’s far. Mom might want to visit on the weekends, so allow her that brief escape from the house. Pick somewhere that’s tricky to get to. Then, no one expects you to come home every weekend. Go two months without talking to your brothers.
Then, plan a weekend home. Invite your college friends to take the train there to show them your hometown.
Instead of your picturesque return, readjust your plans. Instead, Ben asks you to list off the middle names of all of your cousins every five minutes during dinner. Spenser theorizes that the pandemic is a hoax. Go to your room to sleep and discover maggots infesting your blanket. Remember that you can’t bring friends home (see: step #6). Sob alone in your room.
Change your plans.
Apply for jobs, save your earnings, pay off your student loans fast, move out after college. Stop pouring your soul into saving someone when you haven’t saved yourself. Stop using all the bandages on patching up someone else and leaving none for your own wounds. Watch your mother crumble under her own compassion, and promise me that you’ll never become her.
After you complete these steps, I don't know what to tell you. I wish we had a resolution.
Kinsey Ogden is currently a sophomore pursuing a Creative Writing BFA at Emerson College. You can find out more about them on their Twitter and Instagram @kinswaya.
