A sad obituary

His brother wrote the obituary and it struck such a nerve he was interviewed about it.

Aww man

He was quite cute when he was young. How sad.

If the brother wrote this, how did the brother also not check in on him?

RIP. The end I think I'll have.

Oh damn. I shouldn’t have read this at bedtime. God bless that guy.

The brother did check on him r4

R4 read R1's link

I knew a similar woman who got fired on Christmas Eve after working at the crap job for years. Scrooge lives on.

Jesus, how sad. R.I.P.

Well, that made me cry.

R4, I think that's my end too.

They should name and shame the bingo hall for probably breaking labor laws and firing an old man who worked for shit pay for 15 years without a break.

Brian Eldridge, you are in an amazing place now. Forget the past and welcome the future you deserve. RIP

[quote]Eldridge said he last spoke to his brother on May 4, Brian Eldridge’s 76th birthday, and last saw him in October 2022.

[quote]Eldridge said he decided to be “brutally honest” in the obituary because he wanted people to know the real story behind his brother’s life – and death.

[quote]“Nobody else knew him,” he said. “When our other brother, David, died in October, I basically explained how his life was shot because of schizophrenia. I wanted to be just as honest with Brian’s obituary because his story is sad and true. I personally struggle with the question, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ I have to live with the guilt, regret and shame that I didn’t try harder to stay closer, to see him more, to call him more, to be there for him.”

[Quote]The end I think I'll have.

[Quote] I think that's my end too.

R4 r10, you have us, ya knuckleheads. That's one of the upsides of the Internet and the little communities that it's spawned. I wish Brian had been shown how to get online so it could have eased his loneliness.

If minimum wage had been raised to $15 he wouldn't have had to work for $10.

[quote]“Nobody else knew him,” he said. “When our other brother, David, died in October, I basically explained how his life was shot because of schizophrenia. I wanted to be just as honest with Brian’s obituary because his story is sad and true. I personally struggle with the question, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ I have to live with the guilt, regret and shame that I didn’t try harder to stay closer, to see him more, to call him more, to be there for him.”

My god -this brother used his "brutully honest" obituary for the utterly selfish purpose of obviating his own guilt.

Hint: people who use the phrase "brutually honest" are usually selfish assholes who hide behind "honesty" as a shield for being shitty human beings.

Are you his keeper - of course not. But, there is middle ground between being someone's keeper and letting them flounder alone to suffer.

[quote] If minimum wage had been raised to $15 he wouldn't have had to work for $10.

Your writing's logic would also mean if minimum wage had been raised to $10.01, he wouldn't have had to work for $10, either.

R16, perfectly said.

I'm glad the brother wrote that obituary. I'm guessing Brian wasn't that easy to keep in touch with.

His employment situation was sad. Fired on Christmas Eve after 15 years - no notice. Never had benefits. Sad.

Oh how terribly sad.

The brother could have done a little for his dead brother.

And I suspect the brother wrote this in judgment, rather than understanding, of his brother.

This is a man who wore the same filthy coat year after year, grew his hair so long that it was almost down to his feet, and lived in squalor. Yes, it's terribly sad that he died alone, but let's not pretend this was a sweet old man who reached out and was cruelly rejected. He never reached out, to anyone, EVER. He didn't want to.

I must be very jaded, because the signed comments to the obituary made me roll my eyes a bit. I wonder how these lovely people would have reacted to Brian had they met him in real life. Maybe they would have offered compassion, but who knows.

(The comments here are anonymous and therefore presumably genuine. No eye rolling.)

Thanks, R14.

R22, Perhaps having been bullied his entire life and never fitting in (it appears the surviving brother distanced himself during high school), Brian didn't know how to reach out because he was afraid of being bullied and hurt again.

R17 I meant that we have the power to raise the minimum wage to something closer to a living wage so that no one would have to work for a wage as low as ten dollars per hour. I thought that was obvious.

R21, yes. Exactly. So many obits and eulogies seem to be written and given by people who bear grudges and anger toward the deceased person. The obit or eulogy becomes a vehicle for backhanded compliments ("Debbie always told us just how she felt!") or degrading anecdotes about that time Bob put a fart cushion under his dog's rear end or something. This happens at almost every funeral service I go to.

You have to wonder if the bulk of time and energy went to the older mentally ill brother Middle brother Brian must have spent a lifetime saying he was “fine.”

Anyone who has worked in Social Services or with this population will read between the lines. He was likely too difficult with which to deal. His family could only do so much and/or only chose to only do so much. This has nothing to do with society's responsibility.

Why didn't he learn how to use a computer and a cell phone?

^ it's pretty clear that he had some sort of mental illness but he never went to the doctor so he was never diagnosed

[quote] He was likely too difficult with which to deal.

R28, I agree with your post. But I think it's OK, sometimes, to end a sentence with a preposition.

I once read an article where these people with genius IQs often have menial jobs and apply their intellect to private interests.

R22 may you be visited by mental illness and receive as little compassion as you offer here

I have a brother who is mentally unwell, to say the least. When I was a teen, 20s, even into 30s, I tried to help him so frequently. Numerous times I got myself into a bad financial spot. Finally, I moved from our city for the sole purpose of distancing myself. I haven't spoken to him in years, and not a clue where he is or what he's doing. My parents died pretty young, and he is/was my only sibling. I wouldn't even write an obituary if he died, because I wouldn't have any ideas for something appropriate to share.

"Way to make the post about yourself, dumbass" ~DL (there, I saved you the time)

He's now "safely dead". People can say he deserved better, etc., etc., but they'll never have to put those words into action. I had an uncle who was mentally ill and most family members just found him annoying while he was alive. As soon as he was dead and out of the way, my sister piously named her son after him.

poor kid.

This is very sad. Happy to read he had some money from his parents and hope he found some comfort in his solitude. It does make me think about the question, "Are we our brother's keeper?" I say yes, but to what extent, I don't know. The youngest brother who wrote the obituary saw Brian less than a year ago and spoke to him on the phone about a month before he was discovered dead. Is that not enough for a grown man with his own life and boundaries? How much more responsibility should he have taken on? How much more of his time and money should he have taken away from his own pursuits, his own partner, and his children to spend on his adult brother? Brian had a difficult life and was dealt a raw deal, no question, but he had money, a roof over his head, and two cars. He was not so incompetent that he did not manage to live for 76 years. I don't think the surviving brother should feel any guilt over what he could have/should have/might have done.

My hunch is he had schizoid personality disorder or something similar. I don't mean to pathologize him, this is an incredibly sad story, it had me tearing up.

We had a tenant once who was somewhat like this.

He rented a small holiday cottage from my family in Scotland. He was an American who very much kept himself to himself, if he opened the door to his flat and saw someone else in the communal corridor he would step back inside until they had gone. He was well-groomed, well-spoken and polite, but we could only communicate with him by sending a letter. He turned down several invitations to lunch. He spent all day every day sitting in his window painting and sometimes played golf, but only by himself. My father thought he was a traumatised Vietnam veteran, as he was around the right age. My mother worried he'd be cold because she thought he wouldn't have enough money to keep the heating on.

It was only when he died (we believe of a stroke) without leaving an official next of kin that we found out the truth. The police told us to open some letters to try and trace any surviving family members. It turned out, no word of a lie, that he was a multi-millionnaire. His father had been a successful commercial lawyer and left him a fortune. He attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy, then Harvard, and he had a childhood friend who went on to a senior position in George W Bush's administration. He had married, then divorced, and wandered around Scotland painting for twenty years. We managed to trace some surviving family members who, I think, had never had any contact with him, who gave permission to use some of his money for a funeral (otherwise he would have had a pauper's burial). I think some form of untreated schizophrenia was probably an issue here (his mother had had serious mental illness, we later discovered). It was the most incredible story.

The dead man in the OP is a strange case, some aspects of his personality seem to suggest that he was on the autism spectrum (excellent memory, very poor social skills, intense interests picked up and discarded) but that doesn't seem to fit with his total inability to understand TVs and computers or to get them to function. A child like that today (if the family were sufficiently wealthy) would probably have a team of specialists helping him

A sad story, for sure. But I agree with the other posters that he likely had some kind of mental illness and/or disorder that made him live like this.

He just wanted attention.

There are so many people like him. You can't force services, healthcare or medication of any type upon them. Their survival instincts keeps them out of jail and prison. Family and other people can do all they want to try to help them but they're just beating their heads against the wall. How often in my line of work do I hear family members or people with no experience in these matters say, "Isn't there some agency or government program that can help them?" In situations like these I tell them no. Food and shelter is about it if they even want help with these. Usually these family members are Republicans and Trump supporters. All you can do for them is pray for them and do small acts of kindness.

There was an episode of Law and Order SVU in the first or second season. There was a bland white (a witness called him Gilligan) delivery guy - he ultimately was guilty of raping an old woman because he mis read social cues. The detectives realized that even though the guy.always carried books and bought a newspaper everyday - he didn’t know how to read or write. He managed to get an apartment, get a menial job and function day to day. He managed because he was almost a ghost - no one on a daily basis paid enough attention to him or talked with him long enough to find out if there was something wrong. Denis O’Hare played the guy in this episode. I thought of O’Hare’s character when I read the obit last night.

Some of us are this person.

R45 You actually wrote what I think a lot of us are thinking.