‘Bobbing and weaving’
Isaid goodbye to my older brother, Stephen, in the intensive care unit of a hospital in western Sydney just over four years ago.
He was 55 and had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Things had come to a head after he lost his job and separated from his wife.
It was a shame that the diagnosis and effective treatment had not come earlier. There were other traumas in his life but how they intersected with bipolar we will never know.
Born with a hare lip and cleft palate, Stephen had multiple surgeries from the age of three months, but hospitals then did not accommodate parents. He was left howling as Mum and Dad had to leave him each night.
At about 20, he came off the back of a motorbike and suffered a traumatic brain injury. While he lay unconscious, doctors told us he probably wouldn’t survive. It was a long, slow recovery.
My connection with Stephen was forged early. His surgeries had left permanent facial scarring. When I came along, the school bullying was tough. I was a source of unconditional adoration and fun at the end of a difficult day. Stephen called me ‘‘little one’’ and sang to me as I went to sleep.
As a teenager attending a girls’ school in Sydney’s northern beaches, my world expanded in the time we spent together. We’d walk the inner city streets, talking, laughing, drinking coffee. He introduced me to his favourite cafes where the seats were plastic and the coffee strong. He would throw back multiple short blacks and I would sip cappuccino.
Stephen was a big personality, and in the later part in his life physically large too.
He was a passionate and fast eater. I quickly learned as a child never to let him have ‘‘just one sip’’ because it always meant the whole drink. When he asked for ‘‘just one bite’’ of a piece of birthday cake, I would pick off a minute crumb and reluctantly hand it over, rather than lose it all.
His ability to literally pour any beverage – wine, beer, water – down his throat in one go never ceased to amaze me. He would always be finished just as everyone else was starting. But that allowed more time for him to talk – usually about politics.
Stephen adored music and saw it as his duty to educate me about whatever he was into at the time: Meatloaf, Dylan, Motown, Springsteen, Miles Davis.
I have a vivid memory of a car trip with him to Bathurst, New South Wales, where he was studying. As he drove us through the Blue Mountains, he popped a cassette in and proceeded to belt out each and every song on Springsteen’s Born to Run.
I groaned and laughed nervously, hoping that somewhere, somehow he was thinking about the driving.
He often just didn’t care about what people thought of him.
My other brother, Neil, three years younger than Stephen, is still haunted by the memory of having friends around and being horrified as Stephen burst into song, hairbrush microphone in hand. We laugh at the memory, but there were plenty of dark times. They explain why I have often described my older brother as ‘‘volatile’’.
Many times he arrived at a family gathering in a brooding, melancholy state and I knew it was a matter of time before any semblance of harmony was shattered. There was never any violence, it was his words that wounded. The cause? A dangerous mix of depression and drink. It was incredibly stressful as I felt powerless to derail his mood and prevent the inevitable conflict with other family members.
Once, he pushed me too far. He had come to Sydney for Christmas and was staying with my husband and me. It had been a difficult year, he was unemployed and in the midst of an acrimonious custody dispute.
The two of us went for a walk and ended up at a Christmas Eve carols service in a large church. It was packed with locals and tourists. The minister began to preach. It was not the usual inclusive, uplifting message of love and hope – this guy wanted to save souls and was putting everyone on notice. I knew immediately this would be like a red rag to a bull for my agnostic, Leftwing brother.
Stephen soon made his disgust known, blurting out, ‘‘Oh, you’ve got to be f...ing kidding me.’’
I could feel the discomfort of everyone in our vicinity. I tried to shush him but he ignored me. ‘‘F...ing judgmental prick.’’
When I left he clambered out after me, asking what he had done wrong. When I tried to explain, he didn’t get it. Exasperated, I ignored him and made for home. That enraged him further.
When I got home I walked straight to my bedroom and slammed the door. I didn’t speak to him for a year after that.
In the following years we got back to a semblance of a relationship, helped by his heartfelt apology, his consistent efforts to keep in touch, be my brother, an uncle to my children, a brother-in-law to my husband.
I can see now he spent years with an undiagnosed mental illness. The jobs he quit, the broken relationships were a part of that. In his later years I’d ask him how he was going and he would often say, ‘‘Oh, you know, bobbing and weaving.’’
By the time he was diagnosed I was living in New Zealand but we spoke regularly. He certainly didn’t want to talk to his little sister about his mental state. He was ambivalent about taking his medication.
When he died he’d recently been discharged from a mental health facility. He had lost a good job and was separated from his wife. Staff there had found him a subsidised, shared home.
Not long after moving in, he tripped on the external concrete stairs leading to the front door. His head took the force of the fall and he died a few days later.
I will always be sad he didn’t get the chance to rebuild his life and live well, with bipolar.