So yesterday my youngest brother Rene got a hold of me by phone and text and I knew something was terribly wrong before even speaking to him. Rene and I had not spoken in quite a while because we are both stubborn and I just get so upset and I guess irrational at times.
His first words were "it's about Randolf" and I knew right away that he was no longer was with us. I always expected this call though I didn't expect it so soon. So until yesterday I had not spoken to Rene and Chantal (my sister) for quite a while. The reasons why are so infantile especially on my part and if anything I have learned in the last 24 hours is to let it go.
Weirdest thing is that Randolf and I have always kept in touch. It was hard given some of his life choices but in recent times we had been exchanging messages via Facebook and Messenger as he gave me some attitude about some of my food choices, distilled spirit options and music adventures. Since our Mom had passed I have not been up to Montreal as often as I should and our physical contact had not happened as often as it used to when I visited annually. There was never ever judgement stuff when we got together. We'd just talk about where we were in our lives at that given point. Randolf and I always shared that history. For better or for worse. I would try to make it a point to bring him out for supper on a Montreal visit. One of my happiest recent Montreal memories was going out for steaks with him and paying this totally outrageous bill.
In the last day I have been thinking about our lives as siblings and some good and some terrible things we went through. As we got older he became my doppelganger until my recent weight gains. We looked similar. We had the same voices. We had the same diction and pretty decent vocabularies. We would be able to fool others into thinking we were the other sibling. That was not always a good thing!
So I was born in '62, Chantal in '63 and Randolf in '67. Randolf never knew our Dad. I barely have any memories of him except when I see pics. I am not even sure I remember him except to know that I was his carbon copy at one point. Our Mom and Dad had been separated for maybe a year when he took his life in Sept. 1969. So long ago but the impact of that haunted us until this day. The three siblings had to stay in some foster families for an 18 month period while Mom tried to get us reunited. Survivor benefits and insurance proceeds under the circumstances of our Dad's death were pretty non-existent. As our situation was temporary, we kids were a package deal in our foster family placements. Most were good. One was horrific for me and I suspect for Randolf. I remember that as I got older and discussed some of this stuff with my Mom when I had the courage to do so; she told me that she felt an enormous misplaced guilt for what had happened to us. She felt responsible for Randolf not speaking coherently until he was 4 years old. I can only speak for myself and I guess Randolf and say that we have had some serious trust issues over the years. I am actually smiling as I type this as this point came up when I last saw him as I was dropping him off at the Cote Vertu metro station in June 2014.
Okay this is a little darker than I wanted to go but it feels good to type it out.
Not too long after the foster family thing happened we were all reunited in Lasalle and lived as a single parent family unit in an apartment on Jean Brillant.. That's where my Mom met our stepfather Gene who together with my Mom brought some much needed normalcy and stability in our lives. We moved to Chomedey and our youngest brother Rene showed up in '73. Things went well for almost a ten year period. Our Mom was together,our stepfather was a good man and us kids were doing okay. High school was hard for Randolf. I graduated in '79, my sister in '81 and Randolf had to compete against us in the same classes with the same teachers. Things were different then. Teachers would put in comments in report cards that Randolf needs to be more like his older siblings. We set the bar pretty high at Western Laval. He had no chance. Plus Randolf was a lefty! Is there such a thing as a normal lefty? I think not!!!
Fast forward to the summer of 1986. My Mom decided that she was moving to Pictou County, Nova Scotia to get a fresh start with Blaine who she had taken up with after the dissolution of her marriage with Gene (my stepfather). She was going there with my youngest sibling Rene. My sister was already out of the house and I had rented an apartment off Levesque Blvd in Chomedey. There was no way Randolf was going to Nova Scotia. I was moving out because our home life was untenable. My Mom asked me to take him with me. So here I was at 24 yrs old already on my way to a life to a life of ruin because of drugs and alcohol moving into an apartment with my extremely angry and stoner younger brother. We managed to live there in reasonable harmony for about a year. Police were called only twice. Once was because we were acting out a wrestling match at midnight on a Monday night. WWF was on Mondays at midnight. Well the neighbors were not wrestling fans it seems. LOL. That was our first roommate experience.
Our second roommate experience occurred in mid 1988. I had hit rock bottom at 26 years old. I had lost job after job. I went from living in apartments to rooming houses to bumming off friends to staying at Motel St-Jacques and Motel Raphael to finally sleeping under grandstands in parks. My life belongings were in a hockey duffel bag and I was doing day labor to drink and use. I had my "see the light" moment and managed to get a hold of Randolf and asked him to crash at his place while I tried to get clean and sober. His only rule was that I could not drink/use. I was ready. He had this dive apartment upstairs from the Blue Angel on Drummond St. in downtown Montreal. He was working days and I was working graveyards. It worked out great. I got clean and sober. I discovered that one could live off pasta, margarine and oregano. The apartment literally had no furniture. It had a mini fridge and a mini stove and strange sexual encounters would occur late at night in the doorway stoop.
While the previous paragraph seems kind of sad. That day in the beginning of August 1988 has led me to where I am today in April 2017. The largesse of Randolf's generosity back then has led to me having this pretty awesome life that I have today.
Our third roommate experience occurred shortly afterwards in July 1989 where he and I moved into this huge flat with two of his work buddies (Mark and Shane) on Park Avenue in the Plateau. By this point Randolf's life as well as mine had taken a turn for the better. I was hired on the company I am still working for 27 years later, I went back to school and finally got my university education at nearly 30 yrs old. I met my ex wife and mother of our son. Randolf's life was going pretty well. He had gotten some decent jobs. He was riding bikes. He met someone. He got married. We were kind of living parallel lives in a way. He moved around the corner on St-Joseph while I stayed on Park and then I moved onto St-Urbain.
Stuff happened in my life in the mid 90s directly related to not having learned life skills when I was younger. I had some solid friendships, solid recovery years behind me and I had Jeune Homme keeping me grounded so when I moved here to SC in '99 I was copacetic. Sadly that is when things took a turn for the worse in Randolf's life. His work life, his home life and his reality life became so messed up.
I knew things were bad but I was 1070 miles away and trying to cope with my life here in Greenville with an 8 yr old kid and no support system. I had an opportunity to get Randolf down here to watch Harrison for me as I had to travel up to Canada for work. I got him to come down for a month with his bike. He like our Mom hated air travel so he took a Greyhound bus down here with his $2000 bike in 2001 dollars crated up. LOL. Thirty hours later he showed up at my place at the Paddock Club on Woodruff Rd.
Randolf and I bonded incredibly during that month sitting on the back porch, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and listening to R.E.M. on cassettes. His fave band was out of Athens, GA which seems ironic given that it is less than two hours away from my house. Had I known when he was last here we would have definitely gone to visit. If memory serves me correctly he would only listen to albums 1 through 6 only. He hated when they went MTV with "Out Of Time". His favorite songs were South Central Rain, Orange Crush, Call On Me, The One I Love and Radio Free Europe. I used to tell him all the time. You need to come down here permanently. I will find a way to sponsor you or worse comes to worse you can stay here and live with H and I and work under the table. Sadly he never took me up on that offer.
Fast forward to today and I am still trying to process all of this. Late last week someone at worked asked me how do I manage to do all that I do with the driving, the concerts, the baseball games, the beach trips, the late night cooking, the overindulging of barley and malt products??? I sincerely answered I am so afraid of missing out on things. I was like Mom was 60, her brother was 54, my Dad was 33 (different circumstances) and his eight siblings barely made it to 60. Little did I know that Randolf was already gone at that point. I last communicated with Randolf on March 21st and per the police he may have been gone a couple days afterwards.
I leave this with the words from one of his favorite songs....
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I've left behind
A simple prop to occupy my time
This one goes out to the one I love
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