This story is real. The names have been changed to protect the interests of both parties.
I want to talk about my biological brother first, to put into perspective about why I am telling the story.
For anonymity purposes, I will call him Dean.
He is my older brother.
I am the youngest of three children. I have a sister who is older than me by two years.
Dean is four years older than me.
For those who know my story, I will not labor over all the horrid details of our growing up years, except to say that Dean was a first born.
At least 100 pictures of this first-born son to the Wilkins family existed at one time.
I ended up with the photo albums but lost them in my last arrest. I was arrested on Industrial Boulevard near Downtown Dallas, Texas. My effects, including the photo albums, were strewn all over the road in an untidily scattered way. Cars ran over the albums and destroyed all the pictures of my family. Deans included.
The ultimate price I paid for being hit by an oncoming car in my addiction.
I was running from the police. A bad habit I had in my addiction. Oncoming cars, one of which hit me and knocked me unconscious. I woke up inside the Dallas City Jail.
My brother grew up in our home and was favored above myself and my sister. He was favored more by my mother; his high I.Q. made it easy for anyone to acknowledge his smarts.
Daddy loved us three children equally, but not my evil mother.
She would say to me, “Why can’t you be as smart as Dean? What is wrong with you, Joseph?”
He was a master chess player. He taught himself to play and tried to teach me.
I learned, but he would never let me win.
So, I quit trying to keep up with the intellectual older brother.
Dean made straight A + grades in Calculus, Trigonometry, Chemistry, and Physics.
He never cracked a book. Never did homework. Always had a natural tendency to learn quickly.
It is no wonder that he became an airline pilot for Continental Airlines in the 1980’s. Had to be smart and stable to become one of “them” kind of people.
“Great vernacular, Joseph.”
Me, on the other hand, I was a failure in school.
I should have been a foot. I could have run away from home had it not been for being pigeon-toed and wearing a size 13 shoe at 12 years old.
I would have been a light in the Wilkins home.
My bulb burned out once Mom yelled at me about being smart like my brother.
I hated her for that.
I was stepped on by Mom a lot.
I made my only “A” in spelling.
I won the spelling bee at age 9. (I think that was my age, but it was a long time ago).
I won the spelling contest by spelling accurately the word: “Ocular.”
She never acknowledged my success in Spelling class.
Her words to me that day I brought home my certificate of completion was, “Is that it? So, you spelled a word. What about the F you got in History Joseph? What about the F you have in Math?”
And, so on, and so forth.
She had a way with words.
Sticks and stones would have felt better upon my brow than those harsh words of criticism and ridicule coming from a hateful mother.
Dean succeeded in being the focus of attention at every turn.
On to the reality of this story.
Brothers in the Bible.
Cain and Able, Jacob and Esau, and the apostles like Simon and Andrew.
Joseph and his brothers as examples.
The concept of brothers also extends to those within a nation or those united by shared beliefs.
Cain kills Able.
Jacob and Esau were twin brothers with a complex relationship, like me and Dean.
Marked by competition and deception.
Even Joseph and his brothers.
The breakdown of Joseph and some of his brothers leading to Joseph’s imprisonment was like my life.
I was not put into prison because of jealous brothers. I was put into prison because of my sin.
My brother Dean did not send me to prison, but he might as well have.
He belittled me and made me feel constantly inferior to his expertise in everything he touched.
I do not blame him today, but back then I did.
My hatred grew as each year passed.
Jesus commands his followers to love one another, just as He loved them, and this love is presented as a way for the world to recognize who are His disciples.
The Bible makes it clear that love for one another is inseparable from love for God. 1st John 4: 20 declares, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him; that he who loves God must love his brother also.”
Tough pill to swallow for me back then.
Before I met Christ, I hated everyone, including Dean.
A day came when less than 14 hours from the time my Daddy, (our Daddy) was murdered, Dean had to fly from Anchorage, Alaska where he was stationed in the Army.
On a special Red Cross leave of absence, Dean flew directly to El Paso, Texas to claim the body of our dead Daddy.
I never thought how he must have felt to see the cold body in the refrigerator of the coroner’s office, back in 1974.
Dean was 22 years old. I was 18.
The coroner pulled out in a six-foot drawer, to be claimed by my brother, and asked him, “Is this your dad?”
His head had not been bandaged, so the gunshot wound was fresh, just as he was found by the Sheriff’s office, some 14 hours earlier as his lifeless body was taken to this cold storage facility.
Blood everywhere. One third of his skull was gone.
Dean’s perfect grades in school and college did not prepare him for this moment.
It did not matter to him how smart he was while in the Army.
This scene could never allow Dean to reflect on how good he was on his aptitude test to join the Army.
His excellence in the Armed Forces mattered not at that very moment as he had to deal with the death of our once loved Daddy.
Not just a death. A murder.
That is my brother.
My flesh and blood brother Dean.
I have only seen him two times since my Daddy’s demise.
Once, after I got out of prison, and the other time, when he came to visit me in Oregon City, Oregon in 1988.
He was a commercial airline pilot, stationed outside of Aurora, Colorado, and out of nowhere, he contacted me.
We visited for one day. A short, 24-hour period, before he left to fly away to Australia.
His last words to me that day at P.D.X. Portland airport was, “I have a bunch of flyer miles to use up, Brother Joe. If you have a passport, I want you to join me soon for a trip to Australia. I will wait to hear from you, Brother.”
That was the last time I physically saw my older brother Dean.
Fast forward to 2015 from 1988.
27 years passed, and I was able, through a supernatural event, I get in touch with Dean.
I asked him, over the phone, “Where have you been for all these years?”
He calmly answered that he had been flying for Saudia Arabia airlines and has been living in the Samoan Islands for years, married and with two children.
We talked for a moment.
He ended the phone call, which seemed sincere at the time, with a question to me.
“Hey Brother Joe, can you help me with some money I need?”
Wow.
I was shocked.
After all we lived through in childhood, and all that we had to endure with our mother dying of Cancer when I was 15 and Dean was 18.
Even after our dear Daddy departed at age 46, Dean only wanted money?
Are you kidding me?
I haven’t heard back from him since.
It is now 2025 and he lives in Oregon with his wife.
No contact.
No nothing.
I have lost contact with my blood brother, perhaps forever.
Now, on to the real brother. The “different brother.”
The one who I cherish, more than he may know.
