Yesterday was my oldest brother's birthday. Not Big Bro, whose death sent me into a psychotic tailspin early in 2017, but the older brother who was so severely damaged that no one in the family doubted he would kill someone some day. We were all kinda proud of him when the life he finally took in 1982 was his own and he took that life peacefully by falling asleep under a running car's tailpipe.

Today is my birthday. Eldest brother was four years older than I and I suspect someone told him that I was all the present he was gonna get for his fourth birthday present. Whether that is true, or knot, for sure we were expected to share our birthdays for my entire childhood and big brother had me terrified of my birthday before I knew what a birthday was. No healthy, well-adjusted 6 year old boy typically wants to share his birthday with a 2 year old sister. Even without the cross-gender dynamics, most 6 year olds like to have their special day to themselves. Whatever the evers of those whats, Eldest Brother and I are still sharing a birthday, 36 years after his death. I still don't much like my birthday. I'm fine with getting older, but beginning to doubt I'll ever be old enough to lose the frightening spectre of Eldest Brother jumping out of the shadows to terrify me. To a two year old, a six year old makes a BIG shadow. That shadow is not quite so terrifying here on my 64th birthday, but it is shadowy, all the same.

Eldest brother spent quite allot of hard time in our family's Alma Mater: Prison. My siblings call prison, "An Institute of Higher Learning." Eledest brother held several advanced degrees. It's a family tradition and another item on the list of reasons my psych counselors formally guided me through the process of therapuetic family estrangement. There are quite a few *graduates* in my family tree. It really is a family tradition in my family.

The support group talks of how "justice" has the power to heal have never set well with me. My time on *the right side of the law* when I helped put my father away for consecutive terms in multiple states only seemd to deepen the infections within my own wounded psyche. Over the decades of mostly leaving the room for these talks, the sylables of *justice* have separated in my mind's eye. It is *just ice*. Ice has its value in the healing process, but it is quite far from a panacea.

Again, I don't know where I'm going with this, or even if I am making sense. Guess I'm just wishing myself a happy birthday. No youthenizing, please. I wear every one of my silver streaks with pride. Save the youthenizing for the dyed heads.

Thanks for letting me vent. . .