The homeless brother I cannot save

[Dale_M]

This is an account of a woman whose younger brother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia: I found it unsettling in its outcome, and the question it poses.

Like any New Yorker, I was no stranger to homeless people. I passed by them on my way to the shiny glass tower where I worked for a glossy women’s magazine: the older lady perched atop a milk crate in the subway station, the man curled up in a dirty sleeping bag and clutching a stuffed animal. They were unfortunate ornaments of the city, unlucky in ways I never really considered.

In ways she had never considered until her brother met with a similar fate.

In the year and a half that mental illness had ravaged my brother’s mind, I’d learned to lower my expectations of what his life would be like. The smart kid who followed politics in elementary school probably wouldn’t become a lawyer after all. Instead of going to college after high school, Jay became obsessed with 9/11 conspiracy theories. What began as merely eccentric curdled into something manic and disturbing: He believed the planners of 9/11 were a group of people called “The Cahoots” who had created a 24-hour television network to monitor his actions and control his thoughts – a bizarre delusion that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Eventually, his story expanded until “The Cahoots” became one branch of the New World Order, a government whose purpose was to overturn Christianity, and he had been appointed by God to stop it.

This made it hard for him to act normal, even in public. He’d lost his job busing tables after yelling, “Stop the filming and hand over the tapes” to everyone dining in the restaurant. Having friends or even a coherent conversation wouldn’t be possible unless he took the anti-psychotic medication he’d been prescribed while he was in the mental hospital. A legal adult, he was allowed to refuse treatment, and he did. Otherwise “The Cahoots” would win.

salon.com/life/feature/2010/07/27/my_homeless_brother/index.html

Eventually, he leaves their parents home without notice, disappearing for weeks. The turning point of the story is when he hitchhikes to Manhattan to see her. And she decides/realizes that she can’t help him.

I’m not sure what to make of the story. I am troubled by it, and wondered what others think. At what point do we turn away? And does it matter if our brother is related to us biologically, or (merely) related to us spiritually?

 

[St_Francis]

There are times when we have to realize that we can do no more, and that if anything is to be accomplished, it must be God’s doing. At this point, all we can do is to pray and offer up little sacrifices to Him.

 

[horselvr]

" At what point do we turn away?"

Good question. My nephew has also just dropped out–he lives in a shelter sometimes. He is a drug addict, as far as I know, does not have any mental disorders like schizophrenia. I have been trying to find him but my sister has moved on with her life. I don’t know to what extent she has tried to help him if at all she doesn’t like questions—my sister is just that way.

I feel terribly sad for those that have family on the streets especially those with mental disorders. The man sleeping in a sleeping bag on the street clutching a stuffed animal I find very upsetting.

The title alone is upsetting. Helpless, hopeless.