Losing His Hero

Today in my morning meditation I was strongly feeling my middle brother David who passed away almost two months ago on November 20, 2023. He was 71 years old.

A bit of preface here:

He also was my abuser growing up (to clarify: emotional and physical, not sexual) and although I had reconciled those experiences through my own inner trauma work we never spoke directly about that time in our lives.

We were never very close in our young adulthood although he was very generous when I moved to Encinitas CA to participate in don Miguel Ruiz’s Dreaming School in 2002. He and his wife Carol lived two towns over in Solana Beach. We interacted quite a bit sharing meals and dog walks on the beach and David took a real interest in my son Nick who was 12 at the time.

It wasn’t until 20 years later that I became fully aware to the degree of harm I experienced at the hands of my brother while involved in some somatic therapy around my CPTSD diagnosis.

I was becoming repeatedly triggered by the behaviors of my two living at home children towards each other. As a result I sought help for those triggers and if interested I go into more detail about my trauma journey on my podcast Evolution Sucks.

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So this morning I woke up as usual to sit in the darkness with just a candle in front of me and the fireplace starting to warm up the house. Most mornings I mediate with eyes open akin to my previous Buddhist training, allowing the mind to do its thing without attaching to or following those thoughts that show up.

This morning however feeling my brother David I closed my eyes and went into a Dreaming state which was the process I learned from don Miguel. Instead of being a witness to the mind and it’s activity, Dreaming allows sensation and intuition to bring you into a place of awareness – almost like observing my dogs on our morning walk nose to the ground following a scent trail. Kinda like that. See where the feeling takes me and what new awareness shows up.

So following the feeling about David I went deeper into what his world must have been like and why he showed up in life the way he did.

And like a bolt of insight I understood him in a way I never had before.

He lost his Hero.

And it broke his fucking heart. I’m guessing he never was fully able to piece his big generous heart completely back together after that loss.

We lost his father, our father William Francis Gilroy II, when he was 9 years old, my older brother Roger was 12, and me being the youngest was 3.

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Imagine:

Maybe it was day like today here in Colorado – lightly snowing, peaceful, and beautiful.

That day back then was December 5, 1961. Bedford New York. Holiday decorations displayed around town. Christmas lights in the neighborhood. The anticipation of another Christmas holiday just a few weeks away.

Yet our father, Davids’ Hero, lay in a coma in a NYC hospital having suffered a brain aneurism and a fractured skull as he collapsed on the sidewalk in Lower Manhattan five days earlier. He was 39 years old.

Relatives somberly tending to us kids at home while our mother was at our fathers’ side.

Imagine:

Our mother looking on as our fathers’ life ebbed away and he was pronounced “dead”.

Imagine:

Coming home to tell her three young sons the news: your father is never coming home. Even writing that sentence I feel the deep shift inside and the gut punch that must have felt like for us three boys. Especially David who was the actor, the performer, the one who made our father laugh.

All of this I see while Dreaming this morning.

There’s more:

I think of Téa at age 9 losing me and how many deep and lasting experiences she and I have had together in her relatively short time here. And what a void my leaving would create in her. How death would shortchange her time with me as she grows into womanhood.

And David, how losing his one true Hero broke his young heart.

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This Dreaming experience this morning created a deeper feeling of compassion for this middle child, my brother, who lost his North Star, his compass for how to live a whole life when his Hero died.

David was a good man with a big heart. He was talented and made his way with work as best he could. He was a generous and a loving husband to Carol for over two decades.

And, like all of us, was wounded and learned how to walk this world as best he could with that wound ever existing.

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As I was coming out of Dreaming I saw how my brothers and I lived our lives conjuring up as much love for Life as we knew how after the rip in the fabric that was our family.

And for a brief moment I wondered what our paths would have shown us had our Hero lived.

Of course, none of us will ever know. Or even know how much time any of us have left here on earth.

Maybe we could just go live it fully. Wounds and all. This is our own unique journey. This is Life in all its poignancy.

Thanks for reading.

Jamie Gilroy is a Mindset Coach working with men to unlock their fullest potential. Are you looking to tweak and improve some issues in your life? Are you interested in a free clarity call to investigate working with Jamie? Email him at:jbgilroy@icloud.com And check out his website to learn more about the work he does: https://jamesbgilroy.com