MY BROTHER’S KEEPER.

Leslie and I have always been close – Well as close as it’s possible to be under the circumstances.

Mother and father never wanted me to be an only child since they’d both been only children and both been lonely. They dreamed of the ideal family with two children and in a way their dream came true. However it was not to be exactly as they’d wished since Leslie was born with Cerebral Palsy. He was so severely affected that his body was a prison which housed his very considerable mental abilities but trapped him within its confines and he wrongly gave others the impression that because of his severe speech impairment and tendency to salivate that he must be mentally handicapped too. Very often the greater the physical disability the more mental deficiency is assumed but often in complete contrast the brighter the person actually is.

Despite a good education at a special school Leslie found it extremely difficult despite all the technology that’s available today and the supposed increased awareness on the part of the public, to gain employment. One can see by his eyes that he has a keen grasp of the world and ashrewd understanding of other people’s attitude towards him. He knows if he is truly accepted or written off as an idiot. Because his body is a minus rather than a plus he is often very frustrated by it and is not the sanguine accepting disabled person who smiles a lot and is thankful for his lot because he has known no other life. His keen intelligence means he knows that he has missed if not exactly what he has missed but that said he is often cheerful and good company and could be deservedly described as courageous. I love him dearly but because I share many of his traits I also find him damnably irritating as no doubt he does me.

After completing my own education I went into teaching. It was assumed that I would conform to the norm when it comes to being the sibling of a handicapped person and go into special needs teaching. I deliberately avoided this. I always felt it would be too close to home and terrible though it may sound I wanted to get away from that. To be identified as Judith rather than the sister of a disabled man, who is teaching “his kind” was important to me. I thought there may be extra pressures on me and that I’d be thought to have extra insight beyond what I had just because of Leslie. In fact few people knew about him where I worked. I wasn’t ashamed of him but just as his disability doesn’t define him neither does it define me and I’d be quickly annoyed by the repeated question: “Why didn’t you go into teaching people like that”? It’s bad enough them being categorised as “people like that” without me suffering that every day. I’ve done well too. It’s bad enough nowadays what with children having little or no respect for authority and teachers having to commence work which should have been carried out by the parents years ago but all the same I’ve climbed to the top of my profession and have just been offered the chance of a headship.

We always loved our parents who fostered in us the importance of family and interdependence – One upon another stemming first from the family and until it encompasses the whole of humanity. But they also engendered in us a sense of our own individuality and stressed the importance of privacy and the need to fulfil our own potential. While they instilled in us consciences which they finely honed they taught us that a continued sense of guilt about things we cannot help and wrongs already apologised for was both valueless and self destructive. When wrong has been done and restitution made where possible, move on and learn from it. They taught us that we have God’s forgiveness if we’re truly sorry. Oh how I miss my father. While mother quite naturally inclined towards Leslie for which I do not blame her I was always Daddy’s girl. He died last year. He always found time for me and made me feel special – As special as Leslie is physically different. Until his death they shared the responsibility for Leslie’s care but now mother has to shoulder it alone. He has never wanted to go and live in some barracks of an institution with itinerant care workers to whom at best he’d be just another of “His own kind” and at worst a number on the door of a room. Too often these people are inadequate people themselves and these inadequacies are evident in the way they do their jobs and the way they see their clients some of whom are far brighter than they are. The outside world doesn’t want to see them as the actually inadequate looking after the supposedly so but that is often the case but not always but rather they prefer to see them as saints doing a job most would run miles from. He is too handicapped to live alone but mother is finding it hard to cope now that father has gone. I live over a hundred miles away and have never married. I’m a real career girl. I’ve never found the prospect of marriage appealing and live alone through choice and can’t understand those who say it’s unnatural. We’re not close geographically because the emotional closeness coupled with a geographical closeness would make it chlostrophobic. Now though I may have to go back – To be drawn into the spider’s web, to be strangled by what used to cocoon, to be smothered by what used to support to share Leslie’s “prison” with him as I sacrifice much of the liberty which I was taught to prize so highly as I am forced to display those caring values we were taught from the cradle. Whatever shall I do?

I have an appointment today with the school governers and I shall have to decide whether I shall accept the headship and have come to this little church to pray. So far God hasn’t jumped from the sky in a blaze of glory with a written tablet of stone with the words: “Judith take it” or “Judith go home to your mother and brother”. My pricking conscience hasn’t pricked so hard that I can just reject the headship without any qualms either. I thought of tossing a coin, heads Leslie mother and home, tails new school and new start but something so important cannot be decided on something so trivial as the toss of a coin. Should I shuffle playing cards – Highest and Leslie wins, lowest I take the job? That would cheapen the two things vying for first place as priority. Last night my Bible fell open at the place where Cain asked the Lord: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” when he asked the question as to his brother’s whereabouts. I find myself asking the question: “What if I can’t share the roll of Leslie’s carer with mother? Finally taking it on entirely when she dies or becomes to ill to share it? What if I have them both to care for as increasing age brings increasing infirmity? What if I crack under the strain”? Then worse still I ask: “What if I finally end up hating Leslie? Resenting and blaming him for my life’s altered course”? What a terrible thing it would be if I saw him less as a brother and more as a burden. I’ve hated it when people use that word to describe him. Without either knowing or intending it he has taught me so much about others’ imperfections and indeed about my own imperfections. He has enriched my life and taught me more about how to respect, treat and regard others – Stuff I’d never learn in any textbook. I don’t want that to be thrown away because I do what I will later regret. His vulnerability has mirrored my own.

I’ve only just managed to catch my train. A blind woman living alone had experienced burst pipes and her home was flooded. I spotted her on the way to keep my appointment and stopped to help as she was in distress. This unknown stranger had to rely on me a total stranger for help because nobody else was around. She was frantic and during my time with her she told me she came from a dysfunctional family whose attitude was that of embarrassment in the face of disability. I’ve missed my appointment and as I sit reading my paper on the way home to Mother and Leslie it occurs to me that God has answered my prayer after all. Is it right that in this society someone like that should rely on someone who could have robbed her or worse? I don’t think so, do you?