News: Dream Theater Forums:  Still "a thing" since 2007.

I have a similar relationship with my brother.  We just grew apart.  I finished college in 2002, and he was still downstate at school.  I went on to work, go out with friends 2-3 nights a week and live my life, never really checking in on him.  He has held that against me for 22 years.

My brother has a big ego - he finished college and rather than move back home to the Chicago suburbs, he stayed downstate in rural Illinois, where he got a job and could be "the big guy from Chicago" in a smaller town.  He has always held it against me, that I never stayed in touch with him, but forgets that telephones and relationships work two ways.  I never heard from him, and still don't, even though we now live 20 minutes apart.  He never RSVP's for family parties and I have to badger him and say "hey, are you coming?  We have to figure out how much food to buy."  He still acts as if the world revolves around him at his leisure and he can just wake up and decide if he wants to do something vs. planning ahead.

He never really checks in with me, or even my parents.  When my daughter was born and he became an uncle, he waited for four or five days before reaching out to me and congratulating me.  He never cared to ask about her as a baby, and still now as a 9 year old.  My wife held it against him so much that she refused to let me ask him to be godfather to our second child. 

Even recently, my dad coordinated my mom's kidney surgery 2 weeks ago.  He got it all sent, sent off a text with the details.  My brother responds and says "well, it looks like you have it all set" and my response was "thanks, I'LL BE THERE."  My brother didn't show up at the hospital, even though it was possible that my mom had some adverse reaction to anesthesia or her vitals could have crashed during surgery. 

My dad knows he and I don't really get along, but we are cordial.  I think it bothers him, but there's not much we can do - I always tell my wife that talking to him about it is futile, since my brother will never change, so why bother dredging all of this up. 

Things with jingle.brother are somewhat similar.  He's 4 years my elder, and when my parents split up (I 14; he 18), he took it upon himself to be fatherly to me.  Fortunately, after about 10 months of that, he was off to University, so I got a respite from him parenting/controlling me, but it never really ever did cease.  He always fancied him self smarter/wiser/better/etc... than me.  The beginning of the end was during my wedding (long story), and as I said earlier, rather than admitting he did wrong, he and my sister-in-law doubled down that they were right, and we (mrs.jingle and I) were wrong to even be upset.  It was 15 years of me trying periodically to reach out - hell, mrs.jingle even tried to connect our kids with their kids on a few occasions.  We were cordial for a while at family gatherings, but after drifting further apart for years, it all blew up when he called me after I'd be let go from my job in early 2017 (which, for those that know, was one of the best things to ever happen to me).  He called to console me and give me a pep talk because he'd gone thru this and knew what it was like and wanted to impart some wisdom on/for me.  THIS was the reason he called me after barely talking for 10 years?  Not after we'd lost two of our household pets the year before?  Not when he knew mrs.jingle's dad was in a head on collision that instantly killed her uncle and left her dad in ICU for weeks.  No, he calls to deliver some of his professional wisdom on me.  The conversation started going sideways after that, and then he started attacking the behaviours and character of the jingle.kids out of the blue.  Well, that was the end of that.  After that conversation, the only time we've spoken in in the weeks around the events of my father's death, and I haven't talked to him in almost 4 years.

Unfortunately, you can't choose your blood/relatives.  I know a lot of people have the mentality the family is always there for each other, you don't turn your back on family etc ... but that's not the case for my family unfortunately.  And I don't feel bound to look past people's shitty behaviour and treatment of me/my wife/my kids just because we're related. 

I've had a pretty good relationship with my mother for all but about 2 years when our kids were babies, but my father and brother have been a different story during my adult life.

@ Gary... yeah, I'd tried and always kept up my end of the bargain of reaching out and trying to maintain/rebuild the relationship with my father each time he withdrew.  But he seemed to have other priorities, and routinely fell short of doing what he said he was going to do, or even reaching out to us.  When relationships got too hard/rocky for him, he'd make sure there was distance.  In the end, I finally set my boundary - realizing that it wasn't my job to make him want to be a good father.  And I made my peace with that.  I know he did the best he could given how he was parented, but it was still pretty short of expectations.

Man Kade... a good number of similarities with my relationship with my father.

So, my relationship with my father (who passed in 2020) was somewhat similar, at least during the last 10ish years of his life.  He was my best friend for a long time - we were very close.  When he and my mother split up (1985; I was 14), I managed to stay somewhat close to him, but my brother did not.  My father (learning from his father), had very tumultuous relationships with all of his family members (me, my brother, as well as his own father and brother).  For whatever reason, there wasn't enough room in his life to have a 'good' relationship everyone at the same time - someone was always in his shit-house. From about '90-'10, I was in his good graces ... I'd accepted his 2nd wife (they were married in '87) faster and more fully than anyone else in the family, and after the jingle.kids were born, he was a very active an involved grandparent.  During my wedding in '99, there were some circumstances that resulted in a very hard falling out with my brother, and nearly my father as well.  But my father owned up and sincerely apologized for what happened, and we moved on (unlike my brother, who doubled down on what happened, and it created an irreparable rift between us - still to this day as the last time we spoke was around the events of my father's death).  Around 2008, things started going off the rails with my dad ... see, he was the kind of man that needed to be needed.  He was his mother's caretaker until her passing in 2007; he was very active in the jingle.kids lives when they were young.  But then, as they started to get older and we didn't need him to 'kid-sit' or watch them, and they were less interested in hanging out with their grand-parents, well... he started taking personal offense to that.  At that point, he was rebuilding his relationship with his brother (they'd had a strained relationship since my mom/dad divorced), and was getting closer with my brother, as one of his kids needed high-school tutoring in Math (my father was a retired math teacher).  So, my brother was in his good books ... because he was needed.

Things came to a head in 2012 (very long complicated story) when he no-showed the jingle.kids birthday saying "I didn't think your parents would want me there" - when he had been at their birthday every year of their life.  And then more shit when my step-mom passed in late 2016.  We'd had periodic conversations for a few months early in 2017, then I called him in August to wish him a happy 75th birthday, and he was in the car on a road-trip vacation with his "new" girlfriend - not even 8 months after his wife of 30 years had just passed away.  I don't know that we had another conversation until the week before he passed away when he called me from the hospital as he'd been in-and-out of the hospital, having some strange/ongoing issues with his leg.  I'm glad we had that final conversation as some form of closure - he was a very complicated man and my relationship with him my entire life was a roller coaster of closeness and abandonment.

I honestly haven't thought much about him in the last 4 years ... I'm not even sure I remember the date of his actual death - it was the Wednesday 10 days before Father's Day, that much I remember.  So yeah, for those of you that have/had a lifetime of closeness with one or both parents, cherish that.  I'm not sure which is more common - situations like me/Kade, or those of Tom/Tim/Bill.

Man....this is heartbreaking as well. Knowing what I know of you Chad I'm sure that you made every effort to keep the relationship.....being a father I just can't imagine giving up or turning my back on my sons.

Never heard that cover. But also that article is from 2018.

Sended a 11:11 song