Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [103]
“Hmm,” I responded. “Go on.”
“It’s not what they tell you in church, obviously. In church, you’re supposed to pray and be thankful, but like I said before I’ve come to the conclusion that prayer doesn’t work. And for a long time there, it wasn’t easy to be thankful for much. We went through one big challenge after the next. They just didn’t let up. And everyone kept telling me to be strong, that it would work out in the end.”
I knew Micah wasn’t looking for a response.
“And after a while, it just kind of hit me. What do I really believe? I followed the commandments, I believed in Jesus, I went to church, and I prayed all the time. And when I really needed God’s help, it was like the only answer I got was, Who cares? I didn’t want God to give me strength to endure whatever was happening, I wanted God to put an end to what was happening. And he didn’t. So I quit.”
I said nothing. When it comes to matters of faith, the best response is to say nothing unless you’re asked directly.
“Didn’t you ever feel that way?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “All the time.”
“But it didn’t hit you the way it hit me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “I guess I didn’t think any of the bad stuff was really God’s fault in the first place. Things just happened. And if God didn’t cause them, I guess I didn’t expect him to change it.”
He nodded, then said, “I still get sad about everything that happened. Every now and then, it just hits me. Sometimes, it takes days for me to get over it.”
I put my arm around his shoulder. “That happens to me, too.”
“What do you do?”
I shrugged. “Work,” I offered.
He laughed. “Yeah. Your balance is totally out of whack.”
“Yours, too. Work, spirituality, family, friendships, health—you can’t ignore any of them or it’ll get you in the end.”
“Are you saying that I’m as bad as you?”
“Sure,” I said. “We’re brothers. We reacted to the stress in different ways, but to be honest, I think our situations are more alike than you realize. We went through the same things, didn’t we?”
By early 1995, my sister had been in remission for two years and had become a mother. Her CAT scans continued to come up clear. With every passing month, our worries began to diminish. At the same time, though, all three of us became more and more concerned about our father.
His behavior outside work was growing worse. Though heavily in debt, he began spending money like crazy; he remodeled the house and bought a new SUV, and whenever he spoke to us on the phone, his only interest seemed to be in talking about Flame. Despite having a new girlfriend, his world seemed to revolve around the dog.
The estrangement from his family continued; frequently, I’d get calls from relatives wondering what was going on, yet there was nothing I could say except that I didn’t understand what was happening any better than they did. He was distant and on edge whenever I called, his conversations with Cat had grown short, and Dana was busy with twins and living on the far side of town, which brought them into little contact with each other.
Even Micah was having trouble making sense of what was going on. When pressed, my dad would swear that he’d never been happier, that work was going well, that he loved his weekends with the dog and his girlfriend. Twenty minutes later, however—long after Micah had asked him how he was doing and had moved on to discussing other things—my dad would launch into DEFCON 5, suddenly turning to Micah and snarling:
“My life isn’t your damn business anyway, so why don’t you get the hell out of here!”’
Bizarre. Hurtful. Worrisome.
Yet Cat and I were so far removed from the situation that we wouldn’t learn the full story of what was going on until years later. We were caught up in yet another move, while raising two young boys. For the first couple of months, Cat had to stay in New Bern to try to sell the house, while I lived in a small apartment