Long timer here, been around for about 16 years on and off but would prefer not to be recognised.
I've just found out my estranged brother has a terminal illness. That is all I know, no details, what it is.how long her has, where he is.
We have a very strange relationship. Our mother passed away when we were very young in tragic circumstances.
I have always been the black sheep, never really towed the party line, if you didn't fall in you faced the wrath of my father (my stepmother didn't really want us so was fucking evil all of the time). I didn't fall in, just didn't see why I had to subscribe to his views (which were nasty and hateful), but because I never fell in I was always made to feel second best to my brother who would have done anything my father wanted to be loved by him. My brother was also very volatile and was abusive to me both emotionally and physically.
I last spoke to my brother over 14 years ago. He reached out to me and used me to support him through a particularly difficult stage in his life then one day, over a very benign comment, told me he never wanted anything to do with me again and put the phone down. During the time I had been supporting him I was going through some very difficult issues myself and was suicidal at one point but he never really cared, its always been that his life has been so much harder than everyone elses. His life has been hard but its because of the choices he has made during it that it was difficult, choices he always blamed on the fact that his mother had died.
I've worked hard over the past 14 years to distance myself from the toxicity of my family and my children have never met their grandparents or my siblings (my father went on to have 3 more with the cowbag).
I didn't really react when the family member told me that he was dying, I do feel sorry for him, I don't love him, I hope that he doesn't feel too much pain but I really don't feel as though I want to make contact with him. I don't want the tentacles of all that I have tried so hard to leave behind to wend themselves into my new life and effect myself or my children.
Is that terrible, will I regret not going to see him? I think I would have preferred to have just ben told that they had already passed away so I didn't have a decision to make.