...I've ever known, a tremendous wit.
I told my sons that if he finds out I've died and shows up at my funeral, and they meet him, they will think he's a great guy and will have great difficulty understanding what my problem with him was exactly.
I told them to check their underwear to see if it was still on, because it's likely my brother will have stolen it, and then make them feel bad for making him steal it, and also feel bad about walking around semi-naked at a funeral.
I told my sons to tell him that I had a last wish that I addressed to him, which was that he return the bottle of "Pain Expeller."
I made the mistake of going into business with him after my mother died, to make sure he knew I was forgiving him for the way he abrogated all responsibility, while placing his huge legal problems on my father's plate while my father's beloved wife, my mother, was dying a horrible death in front of us.
My grandmother left me nothing but she did give me an antique bottle, the product still in it, of an ancient patent medicine called "Pain Expeller."
One day the bottle disappeared from my bookshelf, where it had been since I was a young teenager with an interest in medication.
My brother had embezzled tens of thousands of dollars from the business, while I was basically living hand to mouth, and used it to remodel his house for resale. I went over there one day as things were falling apart. He'd built a huge glass display case in which decorative items were displayed, including the bottle of "Pain Expeller." He had a key to my father's house, where I was living. He knew how I loved to talk about that silly old bottle with my friends and relatives.
Believe it or not, that was the end of the first in a long series of efforts to forgive him.
I did forgive him, but I warned my extended family to beware of him; something they ignored saying "he's changed."
He rolled everyone of them; until they all came to me to tell me I was right. (At family gatherings we still all talk about him, including recalling his charm.)
After lecturing me and my father - who had the inexcusable temerity (in my brother's mind) to resume dating after my mother died - about "the sanctity of marriage," he abandoned his wife because the mafia was after him for bad loans, after telling my cousin that unless she gave him money, the mafia thugs with whom he was dealing might kill her seven year old daughter.
It goes downhill from there.
I have him money and frequent flier miles to get out of town, but I told him, knowing he never would, that I wanted to be paid back.
Later, he married a woman for whom my wife used to baby sit - how he hooked up with her is a scary thought, since we knew nothing about who she was, until well after the fact - and managed to embezzle huge sums of money from her parents, this while telling all kinds of stories about how I was just the way you describe your sister "Susan." He then started to have an affair with an 18 year old waitress in the business his 2nd wife's parents financed. (According to my wife, she's impressed that he was able to get any money out of those people, since they were skinflints.) He also made a big deal about he took care of my mother while she was dying while I was off living the high life.
When he showed up at my house, in his early 50's with an 18 year old girlfriend, a very pretty but very childish girl, I was appalled. He announced she was going to be his third wife.
Later the stories he told his second wife's parents got back to me through my sister-in-law. They actually believed him because he is a tremendously talented and skilled liar. He makes Trump look like a rube as a liar.
I called my sons together - they were maybe 9 and 13 at the time - and I said, "Gentlemen, I want you to live your lives in such a way that neither of you will ever even think of doing what I am about to do. I am never going to speak to my brother, your uncle, again."
I haven't.
Then I made sure they knew all about the Pain Expeller. I may have lost a brother, something about which I sometimes feel a pinch of guilt, but then I reflect on how wonderfully the pain of dealing with him has been expelled from my life.
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