She who reconciles the ill-matched threads of her life, & weaves them gratefully Into a single cloth...

tomorrow, harry & i leave to go to florida to scatter some of scottie's ashes. the last time i was there was in late september. at the end of august, my dad had taken scottie down to stay with him in st. petersburg for a while. my brother had been delusional & paranoid. i remember him looking out my front window, thinking that people parked in the car outside were waiting for him. there was a night where he was sitting on the cold granite floor of my kitchen, in the dark for nearly an hour. he wanted to be out of sight from some people who were out to get him. he was skinny & had lots of trouble sleeping. my other brother steve was in from china & staying with us, as was my dad; & neither of them wanted to stay in the same room with him because he was up pacing all night long.

mom wanted to have an intervention. we knew he had been taking an oral form of heroin. but the rest of us knew that scott was no where near to wanting help, or believing that he had a problem. my dad thought that if scott would agree, the best option would be to take my brother back to florida with him, away from the drugs, the park where he got the drugs, the bad influences around philadelphia & south jersey. much to our surprise, & my mother's delight, scott agreed. he left with little more than a pillowcase full of belongings. he left a pair of timberland's he had found on the sidewalk next to my door. they ended up staying there for almost 5 months before i got sick of them & threw them out. that was 2 weeks before scott died.

my brother stayed convinced that insects were aliens & that white vans were tailing him & my dad. so dad talked scott into checking himself into a mental hospital where he was diagnosed bi-polar. but scott hated the drugs. he said that he didn't want any meds in his system, regardless of the fact that he had been self medicating with illegal prescription pills, alcohol & street drugs for years. so he was on risperdal & sleeping pills for a couple weeks by the time i came down to stay with my mom. she was going to be alone with scott for a few weeks & didn't know what to expect. we thought that harry & i would be a good distraction for both of them.

scott complained of the meds almost immediately. but damn he looked healthy. he had gained weight, which is a side effect of the risperdal; it increases one's appetite. & instead of staying up night after night, he had been going to sleep at a reasonable 10:00. but this wasn't scottie's lifestyle. & he hated it. to help keep some semblance of his old self, my brother smoked a couple packs of cigarettes & drank at least 3 monster energy drinks a day. it was like a rehab center for a 13 year old. he got so angry with my mom & couldn't possibly understand why she would want him to take his meds. his delusions eventually subsided, enough that he could laugh & make fun of himself about them.

that week, my brother did very little but irritate me. we went to the beach, & he thought the fish were after him. we went to busch gardens, & he waited by the front entrance while my mom, harry & i rode the train to look at the animals. we went to a flea market, & he wanted to leave right after he found what he was looking for. my brother, the scottie i had grown up with & liked hanging out with, was nearly gone. i knew he had been slipping away for years. but that week i spent with him in september, my fears were confirmed.

there were moments that my scottie appeared. like the short amount of time he would play with harry upstairs on the carpet & teach him out to bang on a bongo. or when we would wait to ride the roller coasters together; & go on 3 or 4 times if the line was short enough. he would know where each camera was & have a face ready. i felt my heart swell with sisterly protection when some punk ass kids in the line next to us whispered about scott while looking at his tattooed body & gloved hand that held only 2 fingers. i wanted to shelter him from those stares that he would undoubtably get the rest of his life. luckily, he didn't seem to notice...

when i left florida i was relieved. i remember telling my mother that i loved scott, but i didn't like him all the time. he wasn't the scott that i had remembered. i knew he was in there.. but he was buried so deeply. i wasn't sure he was able to escape...