Family Drama

It seems like one of the most common bridal horror stories has to do with family. Maybe it's Dad not wanting to contribute his share, or a future mother-in-law going crazy with her guest list demands. Possibly everyone who has ever gotten married has a story like that (my mom has a hilarious one regarding my dad's parents), but I don't know if I've ever heard anyone else with my particular conundrum before...

As I mentioned in my last post, for me my family consists of my mom, my dad, and my younger brother, Dan. Totally average American family, right? Except for one little hitch: Dan is autistic.

Autism is an incredibly complex disorder, so invariably when I share with friends that I have an autistic brother I'm hit with a barrage of questions. Thankfully, most people have figured out that Dennis Hoffman's portrayal is less-than-accurate, but there are still lots of questions.

Dan is what we describe as "moderately autistic." He can speak and hold limited conversations with people, but he's also very regimented with his schedule and hates change of any sort. Also, heartbreakingly, he functions just high enough to recognize that he's different from other people, but he can't define it or understand why.

He is also ridiculously good at video games. Like, we don't buy video games for him any more because he beats them in an afternoon. It's kind of crazy.

Because of Dan's special needs, we didn't have the sibling relationship that most other people had. We didn't roughhouse (because when we did I usually ended up falling down a flight of stairs!), nor did we have a lot of sibling rivalry. Instead, I spent half of my childhood as a third parent. Not because my parents forced me to, I just picked it up on my own. When we were little I acted as his translator because his speech was often too garbled for the adults to understand (or he was talking about cartoons or toys our parents hadn't caught on to yet, so he really might as well have been speaking a foreign language to them), and I constantly defended him against anyone who would dare make fun of him or people like him.

But there never seemed to be much of a mutual relationship between us. I loved him, took care of him, helped him with school work and video games (before they got too complex for me), and he...didn't care, it seemed. Once I moved away for college my parents said he'd occasionally mention that he missed me, or hoped I would be home for Christmas or whatever, but I didn't really come up very much.

Billy, however, seemed to become his best friend the first time they met. Because Billy knew video games! Billy was a guy! Billy was cool!

So imagine my complete surprise when I told my family that Billy and I were engaged...and Dan freaked out. He was angry and sullen and told everyone that Billy was taking away the person that was most important to him and ripping out his heart.

Ouch.

He also must have heard my dad refer to Billy as "son" at one point, because he also got it into his head at one point that Billy was going to replace him.

Luckily, my family does have some community resources that help people like Dan and we were able to get him in to talk to a social worker and a counselor. They've assured us that we didn't do anything to set Dan off; most likely any sort of major change, like Dad retiring in a couple of years, could have made this happen. It's also revealed that most likely there's some other disorder like depression simmering under the surface, as often happens to people in Dan's situation, so he can get help for that as well.

So while I'm glad Dan is getting lots of help and support, it's also making planning the wedding rather difficult. I can't talk about it on the phone with Mom if Dan is in the house, and even when I go home to visit Mom and I usually do most of our planning out at lunch or holed up in her craft room. Also, if Billy comes home with me, we have to rent a hotel room, since his presence at the house can often send Dan into a fit. Since we've been saving money for both the wedding and moving to New York, this has meant very few trips back to my place together.

But possibly the hardest part of this? At this point, my little brother is not going to be attending the wedding. Occasionally I'll get depressed and feel like I'm probably the only sister in the world who has ever had to exclude her brother from any part of the wedding festivities. He's not standing up in the wedding party, he's not maintaining the guest book...he probably won't even attend the ceremony or reception. Because no one wants a meltdown in the middle of the wedding day. It sucks, it hurts, but unless there's a major breakthrough in the next six months, this is just the way it's going to have to be for everyone's well being.

What sort of family problems have been thrown your way? How are you working around them?