My Brother Mark

Isabelle, Mark and Rachel

My brother Mark died recently.   I received a call late one January night.  I had just went to bed.  It was almost eleven o'clock.  The caller ID told me it was a number in the 717 area code.   My heart started racing.  My brother's phone number was in that area code.  In Pennsylvania.   I had been in touch with Mark a lot these past couple of years and I knew of his struggle with alcoholism.  More recently he went into a deep depression and told me he didn't want to live anymore.  He felt he had nothing to live for.  Life was hard for him.  He struggled his entire life with alcohol addiction, going in and out of recovery programs.   He would come out or recovery and be strong and work and eventually start to drink again and be back in a recovery program.  He ALWAYS seemed to want to beat the addiction.  But something always kept him from being successful.  Addiction is a terrible illness.  So many lives are affected and destroyed.

This is a phone call no one wants to EVER get.  It was the Coroner, from York County.  He told me my brother was dead.  He asked me if my brother had been sick.  I told him I didn't think so, the only thing I knew he suffered from was alcohol addiction.  I asked him how long my brother had been dead.  He told me he couldn't be sure, at least a couple of weeks but he really couldn't say.  He told me his body was being taken to a funeral home immediately.  He gave me the information and told me I should call them in the morning.  I cried.  I sobbed.  What I feared would happen - finally happened.  Even tho I told myself many times that this is a call that I might get - it felt like someone was ripping my heart out in those moments of hearing this news.

My hope always was that Mark would get the help he needed and FINALLY never drink again.  When he would call me distraught and depressed I tried to convince him all the reasons he had to live.  But my words fell on deaf ears, I'm afraid.  It was clear to me last summer that he had given up - that he just didn't want to fight the fight any longer.  He was terribly lonely and out of work again.  He told me over and over that he wanted to die.

This was heartbreaking for me to hear.  I knew I might get the call some day telling me Mark died.  That call was the saddest call I've ever had to take.  Late at night a stranger was calling to tell me my brother was found dead in his apartment.  Worse yet was the news that he probably was dead for several weeks and no one knew he was dead.

Two days later t traveled to Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.  There was a blizzard predicted for the east coast and I desperately wanted to get on my way and be near his home town to begin to take care of things.  Mark's body was taken to a funeral home.  He is divorced, has two minor children, lived alone and my sisters and I are "next of kin."

I'm fortunate that I have a friend that lives near Philadelphia airport, and I was able to stay with her until it was clear how much snow the storm would bring to the area.  Sure enough the next day we learned that 2-3 feet of snow was going to begin falling that evening.  I didn't want to get caught in the blizzard alone in central Pennsylvania, so I stayed with Chris  near Philadelphia until the roads were clear to travel west towards my brother's.  That didn't happen until Monday, three days after I arrived in Pennsylvania.

My friend Chris and I took off Friday morning before the snow started for the 2 hour drive to Dillsburg.  We knew we could get to Mark's and back to her home before the snow started.  I was anxious to get mail that had piled up in Mark's mailbox.

When we arrived in Dillsburg at the apartment sure enough the mailbox was full...one of the first pieces of mail that caught my eye was my Christmas card, postmarked Dec. 15.  He never got it.  Mail was in the box dating back to the first of the month.  There weren't any other Christmas cards, which made me sad.  I wondered about his friends and other family members...didn't anyone stay in touch with him?  When the coroner called me he said he thought Mark had died at least a couple weeks before.  I was beginning to think that Mark had died several weeks before his body was discovered.  That thought was sad beyond words.

I couldn't get in his apartment because the biohazard team was decontaminating it.  They did hand Mark's computer, wallet and iPhone out the door to the apartment manager who handed it over to me.

Chris and I started back towards Philadelphia that day after a stop at the mailbox.  I was watching my weather ap and I could see the storm closing in.  We got back to her home just before the snow started falling.

The news of my brother's death hit Facebook once I called his ex-wife and his children were told.   Mark's daughter Rachel, is 17, Isabelle is 11.  People started responding on Facebook and saying how sad they were to learn that Mark had died.  So many good words and comments were posted about him.  If only Mark could hear the kind things that were being said and all the compliments about what a wonderful, kind, caring, loving man he was.  He was so lonely and so alone the final months of his life...and it broke my heart that he would never know what people thought of him.

The week before when I got the phone call from the Coroner, I decided to go to Dillsburg out of respect for my brother.  I didn't HAVE to go.  I'm not sure what would have happened or how things would have been settled.  But i loved Mark.  We lived far away from each other all of our adult life.  I knew him as a good person.  A good man.  A man that absolutely ADORED his daughters.  He loved his girls so much.  I can't begin to explain or put into words how he loved his daughters.  Any time I talked to him he told me how upset he was that he couldn't see them.   Because of his drinking he hadn't seen the girls in months and it was tearing him up inside.  Losing his job and not being able to see the girls was more than he could bear.  I believe he died of a broken heart and alcoholism.

Mark was a good neighbor, a great friend and loyal husband.  I felt traveling to Dillsburg and trying to wrap up things in his apartment and take care of his financial affairs was the final act of love I could give him.  I wanted to sort thru things in his apartment, see if there was anything I could protect and save in his apartment for his daughters and try to understand what his last days alive were like.  Also, I wanted to  untangle any financial issues for him.  I loved him and I BELIEVED he deserved to be loved this way in his death.   It gave me peace to know that his body was cremated, and his ashes were handed to me - his family.  I felt his presence when I was in his apartment.  In a strange way I felt he was looking down on me and guiding me to pull together the papers that were needed to do his taxes and shut everything down - cause he just couldn’t do it - he was too sick.

On Monday I left my friend Christine's alone and drove to back to Dillsburg.  The apartment manager said she thought it would be okay for me to go in the apartment.  But she warned me.  It was not going to be pretty.  Sections of the floor in the kitchen  where Mark was found had to be removed, sections of carpet had to be removed in various parts of the apartment where he got sick, had to be removed.  There was a strong odor in the apartment - even tho machines were still running in there to clean out the air.

I found on my ride out to Dillsburg that roads were plowed but many of the side roads were still snow covered.  Sections of the turnpike didn't have the shoulder of the road cleared of snow yet and in some areas a second driving lane was only half clear of snow - making the roads only passable in one lane.  It was a record snowfall, but when I took off in my rental car the sun was shining and the sky was blue.

The apartment manager had the area around Mark's van cleared and a path to the front door clear so i could get in.  I was so thankful for this kindness.

A quick stop at Home Depot prepared me with a mask that protected me from the smell, and I wore gloves.

You can see the couch in the living room had huge cuts taken out of it, if you look at the floors there were sections of carpet and tile cut out - where there was decay from his sickness.  The funeral home listed vomiting, diareah and alcoholism, on his death certificate.  The date of death is listed as January 19, 2016 (found).

Monday afternoon I drove back to my friend Chris's house near Philadelphia.  i didn't want to stay in a hotel, but I found the driving and all that I was trying to do too exhausting mentally and physically so I knew the next day when I went back I would find a hotel room and stay out there for at least another two days.

Each day I went into Mark’s apartment I looked around for things that the girls might appreciate some day.  I had called Chris, his ex-wife, and asked her if there was anything - but she said no, she couldn’t think of anything the girls would want.  This changed when I got to sit down with them a couple days later and the girls had some memory of things in the apartment.  Some of the things they mentioned I had put in boxes to store for them.

My niece that lives a couple hours north of Mark offered to store some boxes of his things in her garage or basement.  Nicole was wise when she said "the girls are too young to know what they might want now.  I can keep them here."   So with this understanding, I went forward and put more things in boxes like Mark’s yearbooks, thinking the girls might like to have them and read about their dad when they get older.  Old school papers, diplomas, pictures of his college days, records of any kind that I thought were of interest or would be for the girls.

I went to the local bank where Mark did his banking and found wonderful, helpful people to work with there.  I was told that if a person had under $10,000.00 an estate did not have to be filed.  Next of kin could take action required to complete business.  So I moved forward with that information. There was very little money left in his checking account.  I had copies of Mark's death certificates to take care of business.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I packed boxes...it might sound like a lot - but I wasn't able to pack them as if I was moving, I was only able to put things in boxes and not pack them too full because i wouldn't have been able to lift them.  I fit about 10 boxes in my car on Wednesday and drove them to my niece's home about 2 hours north of Dillsburg.  That was a long drive, as I had to drive back to Dillsburg where my hotel was.

In between packing boxes I spent time in my car making arrangements, making phone calls to take care of other things for him...and both nights I had boxes of papers, old mail, etc. that I took to my hotel room to sort thru and determine what was needed to file his 2016 taxes, etc.  There were a couple trips to Home Depot for boxes, they're cheap there - about $.87 a box!  When I was in his apartment I didn't want to touch anything - the fabric on the furniture still had that bad smell so I assembled the boxes out in the car and would take them in the house one by one to hunt around for things and fill them.

I was on auto-pilot, not wanting to leave anything behind that I thought the girls would want or searching thru drawers, closets, plastic bins of things for memorabilia.  I found yearbooks, lots of old records, tons of framed pictures of his girls, some of my family's memorabilia from when my parents died, etc.  My brother loved music and he had a ton of CD's that I put in boxes for my sister.  I saved every picture of the girls, I couldn't bear to toss them away or know that the demolition team would be tossing them in a dumpster.

This picture of the CD’s and the TV is the best.  I could picture my brother sitting on the couch across from the TV - all the pictures of his family facing him…that was his view from the couch that he spent all his time on.  I figured that out from walkng around his apartment…there was no TV upstairs, and no desk where he would sit with a laptop.  He must have spent all his time on the couch, downstairs, in front of the TV with his laptop.  In front of the TV was a coffee table with a little drawer.  I found scraps of paper in that drawer that gave me clues to his life.

I looked around this apartment, this place he called home.  I opened the kitchen cabinet doors and found cans of soup and boxes of pasta.  There was a half gallon of milk in the refrigerator, frozen dinners in the freezer.  My heart sank with every realization of what he would have eaten or what food he had left.  There was an open bag of potato chips on the coffee table, as if he had been snacking on them while watching TV the night he died.  I saw his toothbrush and toothpaste in a plastic cup on the kitchen sink - handy for him to use before he went out the door.  Mark was a "neat-nik."   He wasn't a slob.  He took care of things and was organized and tidy.

Mark had a close friend that died of pancreatic cancer about three years ago.  His name was Tad Sisman.  A picture of Mark and Tad was on my brother's bureau.  He loved Tad, his best friend, and Mark was so heartbroken when Tad died.

As I walked around I wondered about my brother's life.  He lived in this apartment about three years.   It was a nice apartment.  I was impressed with the girls bedroom upstairs.  The bunk beds were made and neat and tidy as if he was expecting the girls to come over any day.  The pillows were placed perfectly on the bed…blankets tucked in.   In his room, his clothes were organized in the closet.  Pants hung neatly with pants.  Shirts all hanging the same way, sport shirts with sport shirts, long sleeve shirts with long sleeve, etc.  His sweat pants and shirts were neatly folded in the top of the closet.  This was a man that valued being neat and clean and tidy and organized.  He was not a slob or a bum in his home.

The kitchen dishes in the cabinet looked like they were from a thrift shop, mixed glasses, cups, plates, etc.  But all neat and orderly.  He had a bit of food - canned and boxed - in a cabinet.  His butter dish was on the stove top in a cute covered butter dish as if he was gonna use it for his next meal.  On the range there was a shelf - you can see it here in the pictures.

There was a box clock in a gold case that said “Congratulations for 10 years service” - I think it was from  his former employer, EDS.  Also, a pilgrim salt and pepper set.  At first I missed this stuff.  But when I went back the third day I saw this stuff in the kitchen and decided to put them in a box.  Why would he have a pilgrim salt and pepper?  There must be some story to it and it carried a remembrance that maybe the girls would know?

I was numb each day that I went in to his apartment.  I felt a little detached from the feeling of what being here and doing this meant. I was more focused on what can I save for the girls?  I want them to know the GOOD things about their dad, what their dad would WANT them to know…what could I find and save for them?  It wasn’t until I walked out that I let myself feel the sadness.  When I was inside - it was a job to be done.  

The final day I walked out of the apartment, on Thursday, I closed the door behind me and just cried.  I was closing the door on Mark’s life.  It was over and I would never see him again.  My heart was breaking.  

Before I drove back to the Philadelphia area I was able to meet with my nieces, Rachel and Isabelle, after school.  Izzy expressed interest in having a few things from her Dad's apartment.  She told me about the pilgrim salt and pepper - and I was so glad I took them and put them in boxes.  And the clock is in a box.  I told them I took a couple of sweatshirts that had Jersey on them or lighthouses…and the yearbooks that they could see and other papers of Marks.  I told them how we felt about holding some things until they were older - that Nikki was willing to hold things until they were ready to see what was there.  I told them they had time to let us know.

My brother's ex-wife, Chris said that she and the girls would come to a memorial service in the summer, and we talked about having this in June in New Jersey.  She said Mark loved the Jersey shore and it would be the right place to have a memorial service.

I loved seeing the girls, I wish we didn't live so far away from each other because I would love to be a part of their extended family.   When I drove away from my meeting with the girls again I was so sad.  For lots of reasons.  Sad that we’re so far away and I won't be able to see them very often.  So sad that their Dad, my brother, will miss out on so much of their lives.  Sad for them that they lost their father - who REALLY was a good person, good dad and loved them so much.  Sad that they might never realize how much he loved them because he died of addiction and in their young minds they might always wonder why he didn’t have enough courage and will power to get the help he needed to live and be a part of their lives.

Driving back to Philadelphia on Thursday evening I was more exhausted than I’ve been in a long time.  Mentally, physically, emotionally.  I’m still exhausted…the first night home I had terrible nightmares…waking up screaming.  I’m going to take some time to be quiet now and reflect on my own life, appreciate the good things I enjoy each day, get rest, walk and ride my bicycle in the sunshine outdoors, breath fresh air and be thankful for each day.

The golden moments in this week:

One day I was driving thru Lancaster and I looked off in the distance and I could see about 8 Amish buggies being pulled by horses, galloping quite fast…I wish I could have taken a picture of it…the fields were newly snow covered and the sun was shining down and the sky was blue…

The lady at the bank helped me so much.  She didn’t make me feel like I was a family member trying to get ahold of Mark’s business.  Once I told her the story and gave her my ID and a copy of the death certificate she couldn’t do enough to help me.

Southwest airlines for understanding.  I changed my return flight two times - and they didn’t charge me a cent because of the circumstances.

The first night I drove out there to Dillsburg and decided I would return to the Philadelphia area and not spend $ on a hotel.  It was dark and I hit the turnpike and off to the right on the horizon was a HUGE GOLDEN MOON.  Oh my gosh, it was gorgeous, I looked at it and the tears fell as I thought of how Mark will never see a beautiful moon again.

I'm thankful for the man at Budget car rental, near Media where I picked up my rental car on Monday morning to drive to Mark's.   When I took the car I told him I wasn’t sure how many days I would need it.  We booked it for 3 days and he said if I needed another  day and/or I’m late turning it in - call him.  Turn it in at the airport and call him.  He would credit me back a day.  He did.

My friend Christine who lives in Media, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia-not far from the airport.   We stay in touch and enjoy a comfortable friendship between two women that don’t rehash the past and just help and support each other when we need it.  She picked me up at the airport at 10:30 pm, as a blizzard was predicted and I didn’t want to rent a car and pay for it when I wouldn’t be able to drive to Mark's.  We agreed we’d wait and see how bad the storm was and then she’d drive me to rent a car somewhere near where she lived.  Turns out that was a good decision cause I arrived Thursday night, and the blizzard stopped everything for the weekend beginning Friday.  I picked up a rental car on Monday.

The folks at Hampton Inn.  When I called and they quoted the price of a room - I told them it was a little high, that I was coming in for my brother’s death - and the young woman on the phone put me on hold and came back and said they had a “special” rate for me…and it was a $30 reduction on the nightly room rate.

The apartment manager where Mark lived.  Mark hadn’t paid his rent Dec. 1.  This tells me he died about that time or a week before.  Cause he was paying his rent each month at this point and not late.  Cecilia, the apartment manager, could have kept me from going in…but didn't and wanted to do everything she could to make this easy for me.  She knew me from conversations a year earlier when my brother was going thru some hard times.  She and I had spoken in the past.  She remembered me as Mark’s sister.  It’s because of her that I was called by the Coroner as “next of kin.”  She was very kind, sympathetic and said so many good things about Mark.  She really, really liked him and said he was one of the best tenants she’s had.

I’m thankful for Mark’s next door neighbors.  On a couple of days when they saw me going thru his van parked outside, or walking in and out they stopped me to tell me how sorry they were.  How much they liked Mark and what a good, helpful man he was.  One neighbor is a nurse and she felt so bad that she didn't know what was happening to Mark in the apartment next door - if she only knew - she said.  

Thankful for Bert and Mike, friends of my brothers for a number of years.  They met me for breakfast one morning.  Bert was Mark’s manager when he worked in the coffee shop at Weggman’s.  They became close friends.  They took Mark in 4 times in the past 2 years to help him quit drinking.  Invited him for holidays and special times with their family.  They were family to Mark…and they are very sad because they tried to help him as well.

So many wonderful people in this world…really…and that is what helped me get thru this.  Each time something like this happened, it gave me strength and courage to keep moving forward to finish the “job” of closing up details of my brother’s life.

Linda Sisman, Tad's wife, and I had a chance to talk.  She said Tad had given Mark a cross, the only thing she might like back.  I found a gold chain and cross hanging on a key hook in the kitchen.  I put it in my bag, the only really valuable thing I found.  I took a picture and sent it to Linda.  She said that was NOT the cross and chain that she sent Mark after Tad died..  When I talked to the girls Izzy remembered the gold cross and chain - so I gave it to Chris and the girls.

One of my friends called me this week to see how I was doing.   He is divorced and lives alone and also gets depressed.  (but he doesn’t have an alcoholic addiction).  He said what I have to realize is that Mark is out of pain and suffering now.  Cause the pain and suffering is so great.  And this is what Mark wanted.  I know this on one level, and I accept it.  I just STILL feel it is very sad.  He was only 57 - and it COULD have been different.  But I accept it and I’ll miss him for a long, time and wonder if I really did enough to help him.

These are Mark's beautiful daughters.

I need to stop now.  There are details that I'll need to get back to from time to time over the next few months.  Right now I need to rest and recover.   I've lost people that I loved before and Mark is another person in my life that I'll miss terribly.  My only brother.  He was my little brother and a part of me will always be sad and miss him.

Rest in peace my little brother ~