Judgment Day

A twisted version of the prodigal son

I was the middle child and the only girl between my older brother and my younger brother, Gerard. After the birth of Gerard, my mother was ravished by the disease schizophrenia. When you have a mother that has the worst form of schizophrenia, the middle child becomes a parent to the younger sibling. And Gerard always felt like my child.

My father was burden down with raising three children and taking care of my mother. And because of the turmoil that mental illness brings to the home and my father having to go to work, he couldn’t be the father Gerard needed him to be.

Gerard abused drugs and alcohol when he was a teenager. He had given up the drugs as he matured, but not the alcohol.

One day Gerard was agonizing over his revelation of his wasteful years of alcohol and past drug abuse. The alcohol wasn’t enough anymore to cover his pain of a life he wished would have been different — knowing he could have done so much better with his life — with all the talent God had given him.

Gerard’s inner self was yearning to be heard. He approached my father with love, and it was now time for my dad to look within as well. It was touching, and pure. I call it the parent’s Judgment Day.

“There comes a time when Judgment comes calling in a parent’s life. It sometimes unfolds itself gently and reveals itself slowly, but it can surpass all understanding.”

I could experience this one day when Gerard had too much to drink. My father was sitting on the side of his bed in his room. The day presented itself as any other. In Gerard’s drunkenness, the revelation of what his life had become was no longer deniable. He sat next to my father on the bed. His sorrowful eyes looked down at the floor. He expressed anguish regarding his life. It was a twisted version of the story of the prodigal son. He was reaching out to the father he had needed but didn’t have — the father that was consumed with the burden of his family, which wore him down.

Gerard poured out his soul to my father. While he was talking, we were captivated by the words that hung in the air. There were no boundaries in the empathy of our bodies. We both felt what Gerard felt and became one, which allowed his purity to be set free. I could feel my father’s soul of understanding open. At that moment, we both loved Gerard even more. I looked at my father’s face, his eyes fixed on Gerard as if he was seeing his son for the first time. His expression revealed that he understood the error of his ways.

My father saw the manifestation of his behavior towards his son. In that truth, he saw himself in his son’s anguish. I’m sure at that moment he wanted to reach out and hug him — had not the restrictions of his own childhood intimacies interfered with that.

After my father recovered from a stroke, he depended on Gerard. And because of that dependency, their relationship deepened, which humbled him greatly. As a result, Gerard and my father’s relationship strengthened, and mine weakened.

I was the visitor in the house now — the daughter that got away. I was no longer living there, and in the cycle of life, God works the perfect timing for the individuals to heal.