My Brother Craig: Bittersweet Memories from a Hard Knocks Life Growing Up

Sometimes the relationship between siblings can make a bad situation seem better.

I’m really starting to enjoy remembering some of the recent stories you see me sharing since I became a new short story writer in 2021. This personal essay is one about my relationship with one of my favorite siblings, my brother Craig.

When you grow up living a hard knocks life, you have to learn to grab the good out of every negative circumstance you find yourself in. In my 63 years on this earth, there have been too many of those negative events to ever count.

Holding in the pain that’s accumulated over a life time is a difficult load to carry alone. In my opinion, when you’re able to write and have a release, you no longer shoulder the burden alone.

It’s unbelievable how healing it can be when you spill your guts in your writing and purge yourself of a painful past. Yuck!

That might not be the best example I could have come up with, but regardless of the image it paints in your mind, it’s a very fitting example.

As so many of the talented writers I follow on the Medium platform have pointed out, it can be a two-edged sword when you write and rehash past experiences.

“…I had to take breaks to keep my sanity. Writing can be therapeutic but it may also reopen closed wounds.”

I couldn’t agree with Morris T more, when he said the above words. This has definitely been my experience as well.

Dredging up memories that you want to recall, tends to trigger memories you didn’t summon up; sometimes memories of events you never even knew occurred.

Some of these deeply suppressed memories can lead to profound, if not shocking revelations about your past. The result is a lot of bittersweet emotions. In my case, they’re usually more bitter, than sweet.

Bittersweet is what I felt not long ago, when I wrote a story about me at age twelve, and I thought I was the cause of my mother dying (story currently pending acceptance for publication).

It happened during my adolescence, and I was going through confusing feelings about her physical and emotional abuse. Recalling the events of those two traumatic days in my life felt unnerving.

But something interesting happened after I wrote the story about her dying. I felt so guilty; I forced myself to think of something positive I could write about my mother, such as how my mother was a talented woman and had lots of good qualities.

I shared some of those qualities in the story about the one good day I remember with my mother (though I’m sure there had to have been a few more). That made me want to search my memory for other recollections, but in all honesty, there weren’t a lot of good ones about my mom.

On the other hand, there were quite a few of them about me and my younger brother; the one we call Crig (or Criggy). The nickname is a result of all of us constantly mispronouncing Craig, which was his middle name.

No one ever used his first name, unless it was my mother on sometimey occasions (either when she was really pissed at him, or when she was joking around — in both cases, she’d call him by his first, middle and last name all at once).

My Brother Craig

Criggy was my younger and favorite brother. Our closeness may have had to do with the fact that he was born exactly one day and one year ahead of me, and we had the same astrology sign, Taurus the bull.

His birthday fell on April 30th and mine on May 1st so naturally we celebrated our birthdays together, even when we were the only two celebrating.

Practically every one of my automatic memories of Craig seem to be all happy ones. He was a funny, and happy-go-lucky kid. He made everyone around him feel that way too, in spite of the poor to miserable circumstances that were happening around us.

Here are a few of the highlights about some of my favorite Criggy qualities and moments.

Craig could sing his ass off, just like my mother, and practically everyone in my family (except me and my older brother Jr.). Criggy had a high falsetto voice along the lines of Smokey Robinson. My favorite song to hear him sing at our strictly siblings talent shows was “If I Didn’t Care” (the version by the old school group The Moments).

Craig loved to dance and was great at it. At any age, he could have given James Brown a run for his money. On the nights my mother and her friends would shake us out of bed to perform, Criggy usually made the most money (or whatever treats they were paying with). His dance performances would surpass anything me or my other siblings tried to do — and believe me, we tried hard.

Craig had a great smile, and he loved to use it. His biggest weapon was his sense of humor and he used it both offensively and defensively.

A Survivor and Protector

There are lots of other good things I could say about my brother Craig. Even as I write, more and more memories keep flooding in my head. I feel like I could go on and on, but I think I’d better save them for another time.

I had a really funny one I initially planned to share, but my writing seems to have a mind of its own, so I’ll put a mental pin in that one. I will, however share this little quick example of the kind of brother he was, even though he wasn’t even the older brother.

The Chicken

Craig was a good cook, although I honestly don’t know where he got it. My mother was rarely around long enough to do any cooking herself, let alone show any of us how. My older sister was typically the cook, in between the times she ran away from home, and when she wasn’t there, the job went to me.

Yet, I remember various occasions when my brother would manage to whip something up out of nothing.

One time in particular, about two days before we first went into the foster care system, my brother fried a whole chicken and made a sumptuous meal.

He’d found the chicken in the trash; apparently someone threw it out because it smelled spoiled. But Criggy washed that chicken and scrubbed it for a long time.

I distinctly remember, we didn’t have any seasoning or any flour, but there was some leftover cooking grease, so he simply fried it in that.

He also sneaked in the backdoor of our neighbor’s house, right where their pantry was. He knew that because we used to play with their kids, and as wrong as it was, he stole food from them on more than one occasion.

He swiped a couple of potatoes and cooked those along with the chicken; making sure to clean and use the peelings, to help stretch the meal for the four of us. And this was long before potato skins were a thing!

I don’t know if it was because we were starving or, like I stated above, he was a really good cook, I only know THAT WAS A DAMN GOOD MEAL, and it wouldn’t be the last one he ever made us.

Always Trouble in Paradise

Of course, living the way we lived, under such difficult circumstances, there were countless negative situations associated with my brother, but not due to a bad rapport between the two of us.

Keep in mind, when we weren’t being raised by the state, or some other strangers passing as kin when we were growing up, we basically had to raise ourselves.

If there’s always trouble in paradise, you can just imagine how things were when you’re living in hell.

Because we were so close and spent time together whenever possible throughout our lives, we had to find our way out of plenty of scraps together. In one incident, my brother actually got stabbed for trying to protect me (actually, I only just remembered right now, while I was writing).

So as you might have guessed, in the future, I’ll be sharing more memories about my crazy brother Craig, and I will definitely elaborate on the ones I already mentioned.

However, in the spirit of purging, and releasing negative energy, before I write about any other stories involving Craig, I have this ONE really negative memory to get off my chest. I say it like that because I feel guilty about it, to this day. It’s about the time I betrayed my brother and hurt him, without him even knowing it.

Be sure to stay connected so you can read the following story when it’s completed and published by yours truly, Justiss Goode:

“The Time I Betrayed My Brother to Save My Own Skin” Have you ever said or done something under duress, that you feel guilty about now?

And be on the lookout for the availability of this one soon, possibly in another member’s Medium Publication:

“Guilty: I Almost Made My Mother Die” A real life confession about the time I wished my mother dead and she almost died the next day.

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