A New Start

My brother has died. The body that held Mark Daniel Bowater is now a shell laying in a morgue in Mackay.
My brother, the person is now elsewhere.
Mark, as I've said numerous times, was a much nicer person than I am. He was kinder, gentler, more patient, slower to anger and much, much quicker to see the best in people. His entire life was dominated by people who he should never have given the time of day to. People who undermined him and set him up to fail. The person who did this consistently throughout his life was his own father.
Raymond Bowater just never gave Mark a break. He bullied, criticised, undermined and encouraged the worst in Mark. Mark was abused by his parents. He was different and for this he was treated appallingly. His parents beat him with the cord from an electric jug, he was fed dog food and he was never made feel that he mattered to them. In this time my parents would have been charged with abuse.
Mark kept his father in his life until relatively recently. The incident that helped Mark make the decision to exit his father from his life was the complete lack of concern by his father when Mark had his 2nd heart attack. Mark was argued with and told the doctors were wrong. Our father knew better.  I remember Mark telling me that this was when he knew that his father just didn't care...and this realisation hurt Mark deeply.
Mark was angry, deeply angry. He felt betrayed by his parents. He spent his entire life wanting to be loved by them and they had treated him like shit. He intensely disliked most of his siblings.
My brother wasn't perfect.
He desperately wanted to be liked by people and that was his single biggest failing. Because of the complete absence of parental affection, Mark spent most of his life seeking acceptance and love. He rarely found it. I wondered out loud to Mark about a year ago, that I have so much "cunt" in me and he so little. Mark was spineless and allowed people to treat him badly. I understand that this was because his parents had planted the message very early in his life that he was worthless.
Mark was a passenger in life and never took charge of it. He was also lazy. He wanted a magic pill to solve his many problems. The absence of "cunt" meant that he never adopted a combative approach to dealing with his anxiety and other mental health issues and because of this has left this lifetime with them intact.
I hope that death has given Mark the new start he so desperately needed. He certainly wasn't going to create one. Nor were his "family" ever going to start treating him as they always should have.
I love him dearly and will miss him for a very long time. I tried to encourage Mark to be the person he should have been. And it is because of this that I know that I at least treated him as he should have been treated.
Not skillful this entry. It is however, honest.