There was a time in my life when I was certain I was broken in matters of the heart. I thought I could only love one person at a time, that anger ruled, spite filled in the empty spaces, grudges were permanent and forgiveness impossible.

I happen to come from some seriously mean stock. And while there are tales of physical brutality and general badness on my mother’s side a few generations back, my father’s emotional cruelty makes Great Great Gramma Wein look like Glenda the Good Witch. I have imagined before that the other half of my DNA simmered in a rusty cauldron of hot bubbling viciousness, a sour olive-drab ooze that later thickened as it cooled to 98.6-degrees and was now coursing through my veins. It’s part of the reason, when dealing with infertility, that I opted to skip IVF, the best decision I ever made. I reasoned that there was a reason I wasn’t getting pregnant and that reason was an end to my genetic line.

Over the holidays, The Brother I Still Speak To informed me that his father (our father) had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimers. We were having lunch in a large booth at a pub—this brother and me, The Gaydi Project, Sam, Ruby and my brother’s girlfriend—when I just happened to ask the right question, unknowingly offering up the elusive-and-agonized-over appropriate moment my brother had been hoping to find since I’d arrived on Christmas day.

I haven’t had a relationship with my father for more than 25 years but The Brother I Still Speak To and The Brother I No Longer Speak To have each managed to maintain some sort of—what should I call it?—arrangement?  with this father person and that arrangement goes something like this: They love him, he doesn’t love them back and they deal with this rejection the best they can. I, on the other hand, walked away early, pony tail swinging, tears flowing and though it took many, many years, I made my peace.

It is, I think, our individual approaches to the same rejection that have defined my relationship with each of them. It’s all very complicated and I could fill every single page of the Internet (and then three leather-bound journals for the appendix) trying to explain the awry-ness of my family. But the fact is that The Brother I Still Speak To doesn’t want to hurt me and I don’t want to hurt him. In a largely unspoken agreement, we respect that each of us has chosen a different path as it pertains to our father and we’re careful not to bruise one another over it. So it makes sense that he was nervous to drop it while it was hot.

I think he was worried I’d freak out, rejoice, fly off the handle, go into a rage, crumble into tears, jump up and down with glee…I really have no idea quite what he thought my response would be. But it was certainly something un-good because he was a bit sheepish and gently awkward about the telling. He may have even winced, prepared for me to throw my drink in his face, which I would never do because if ever I needed a stiff one, it was at that moment. Jamison on the rocks has never tasted so good.

There we were, sitting at this table with the big huge elephant on it and what do you know but my eyes filled-up with a tear or two. To be clear, my eyeballs weren’t brimming over; there was no spillage. But my very first reaction was one of sadness for this mean mo-fo who fathered me because, I don’t really care who you are or what dastardly things you’ve done with your life, Alzheimers is no pleasant ending. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone: Not my worst enemy, not Dick Cheney or Robert Mugabe, not even my father. Admittedly, I had a number of other far less generous thoughts immediately following the blip of compassion. Some of them are very cruel but I’m going to list them anyway because they are what they are and I’m nothing if not honest. Here they are in order of how they appeared in my invisible thought bubble:

1. Sadness/pity (already said this one but I wanted to keep the list in appropriate numerical order).

2. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

3. Thank God my mother isn’t married to him anymore…I’d hate for her to have to wipe his ass.

4. Alzheimers? That’s too easy! He deserves to be aware of his slow decline and eventual demise.

5. I mean, how about something painful like anal cancer coupled with severe sinusitis, ingrown toenails, erectile dysfunction and the clear realization that he’s dying surrounded by little more than feral cats?

6. Does this mean I have a greater likelihood of getting the disease?

7. That asshat gives me all the bad shit.

8. The ultimate control freak losing all control? Dude. Karma is no joke.

I’m not exactly proud of numbers 2 through 5, and number 7 is a toss-up (thanks to this man, I have a greater chance of dropping dead from a chunk of loosened plaque than I do of making it to the age of senility). But as I sat across from my brother and my mother a little dumbfounded by the flow of information, it was number 1 that reassured me. My unflinching first reaction let me know that I’m not defective. My heart is working as it should. Anger and spite are not permanent residents there. Sure, grudges come and then I let them go. Forgiveness is being cultivated. It’s a work in progress and it’s fun to joke—even okay to do so—but mostly, I knew right then exactly how far I’d come in healing old wounds.

That night and the next, I stayed up late with my mother listening to stories about her life, her marriage to my father, their love and the end of it, the events that lead to their separation and events that transpired after. Some stories were familiar but others I hadn’t heard before. His vulnerability and aging was, for my mother, a spotlight on how quickly time has passed and a reminder of what matters in life. “Wanna take another walk down bitter memory lane?” she asked me with a smirk before continuing. And so we walked.

Just before she put the family I’ve built in a cab for the airport, she dug out a drawing of the family she’d built, made by The Brother I No Longer Speak To—the middle child—when he was five, three years before my father left. It’s compelling how accurate a story he told at such a young age.

That right there is a pending American tragedy. It’s an understatement to say that the progress I’ve made has not also been made by the artist.  There’s plenty more to say. But I’ll leave it at that for right now, I think.