Brian’s Story

My brother came into this world as he left it, making a splash on the front page.

My family adopted Brian when he was eight months old, part of the first group of Coloradans to adopt from an orphanage in Romania. I was only five at the time, but I still remember going to the airport to meet him, the gate swarming with news crews. I’d made him a banner that said Welcome Home Baby since my parents hadn’t decided on a name yet.

They named him Brian Petru Spooner. Petru was his name in the orphanage, Romanian for Peter. He came from a family of migrant workers who weren’t able to support another baby. He always seemed to have a bit of gypsy blood in him, especially the last few years when he moved around a lot, never quite setting down roots.

Brian’s life was never easy. In the orphanage he was fed a potato-based formula instead of milk, leaving him starving and drastically under weight. When we took him to the grocery store, he would scream and reach for jars of baby food.

But he was a smiley baby too, so darn cute with his dark eyes, skin, and hair. He lived life face first, never walking when he could be running. He’d put our babysitters through the mill with his endless supply of energy.

Brian was a normal kid in some senses. He loved baseball, fishing, and riding bikes. He played peewee football and one year my dad made an agreement with him that for every sack he made, he’d get a pumpkin. We must’ve had twenty pumpkins that Halloween.

Brian was friendly, outgoing, and liked to have fun. He made friends easily, much easier than I did. In fact, he used to like making friends so much that every time my family would go out to eat, Brian would befriend the table next to us. I used to think it was funny, but it turned out to be a side effect of his attachment disorder.

In addition to attachment disorder, he also had sensory integration dysfunction, ADHD, and would later be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

I remember having friends over when I was in high school and for some reason Brian was riding his bike around at night with a lantern attached to the handlebar. They thought it was so strange, but Brian was always doing things like that, things that didn’t make sense to anyone but him. There were dots in his mind, but he wasn’t able to connect them.

Brian couldn’t think ahead, couldn’t see the consequences of his actions, and he liked to be the center of attention, a dangerous combination. People used to egg Brian on, encourage his rowdy behavior. Brian wasn’t smart enough to know that people were laughing at him and at the crazy things he was willing to do. He simply wanted the attention. It used to drive me crazy. These people didn’t know, didn’t understand, and it was cruel.

His temper would flare up so easily, and about such stupid things, like who would ride shotgun. Sometimes it was easier to let him take the front seat than endure a tantrum.

I remember when I first knew he would always be different. My family was in Ely, Minnesota where we liked to go over the summer. We stayed in cabin on a lake, secluded with a private dock that was surrounded by blueberry shrubs. Brian had had a meltdown and, as always, it came on suddenly like flipping a switch. I escaped to the end of the dock to try and to get a handle on my emotions.

It wasn’t fair what he struggled with, what my family struggled with. How could Brian be so selfish? How could he not understand what he was doing? It was easy to misunderstand, to misplace anger. But it wasn’t his fault that the chemistry of his brain was off. It was the severity of his mental illness that was the true villain.

My brother’s mental illness got worse over time. It saddens me because he had so much going for him. He had a kind heart, a sense of humor, and was a hard worker. Brian really liked to work, especially on farms. And he was so strong. He helped me move so many times, hauling unbelievably heavy things up and down flights of stairs without complaining.

It’s hard loving someone and wanting more for them. To watch them self-destruct over and over and over again, knowing there’s nothing you can do to help.

I’ve had people ask me if my parents ever sought help for Brian. The answer’s a resounding yes. Brian saw psychiatrists and psychologists since he was eight years old. He’s been in and out of mental institutions, in and out of jail, set up in so many group homes and apartments I’ve lost count. They helped get him on disability so he would get social security money and food stamps (which is a ridiculously complicated process meant to discourage people who need help from getting it) and hand-delivered his meds. But the harsh truth is that sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do.

He died March 10, 2014, only twenty-three years old. Just as people never technically die of old age, no one dies of mental illness, but I believe that was what killed him. He’d threatened suicide for years, and I think he just couldn’t handle life anymore. So he took a way out.

People sometimes joke about bipolar disorder, referring to individuals who are hot one-minute and cold the next. It always puzzles me because that doesn’t scratch the surface of what it’s really like. And it’s not something to joke about.

I want to end on a positive note. One of my fondest memories of Brian was fishing with him in Minnesota. He’d caught a huge fish, like half the size of his body. And I’d caught this dinky thing barely bigger than a minnow. I remember the huge smile on Brian’s face, and that makes me happy.

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