I hesitate to call him CrazyBrother now in light of my sister’s, DNOS, call to me this morning.

CB called our mother at about 3A.M. their time and told her he was heading to hell. He’d taken nearly all of his pills and just wanted to let her know. Mom is not usually good in a crisis but this time she called the local police for the number of emergency services in San Francisco.

By the time she got through to 911 there, he was already on his way to the hospital. It seems he had called 911 before he called her.

DNOS was in tears when she called me and I was/am my usual calm and stoic in the face of “death”. Useful? Perhaps. But not cathartic and sometimes you need the latter more.

Rob reminds me that CB wants help or he wouldn’t have called 911 or mom. Because he is mentally ill, it’s really hard to assess just how much “choice” he has. My days on the widow board with those widowed by suicide inclines me to the politically correct answer of “he can’t help himself”, but I wonder.

Regardless, he is safe and on 72hour hold and maybe he will finally be properly evaluated and get help for his long standing problems.

Somedays I wonder who I would have been had I been an only child.