Sleep defies me tonight. So I will try and honor the source of my wakefullness.
William Michael Broyels Jr. was born on January 26, 1947 in Houston, TX to William Michael Broyels Sr and Eunice Louise Broyels, the daughter of Vernon Russel Baty. The elder Broyels served in the Devils Brigade, a Special Forces unit that consisted of American misfits and malcontents paired with Canada’s finest. Together they became a tough fighting force during the war in Europe. William Senior was wounded on the beaches of Anzio, Italy and returned to Houston, TX some time after his medical discharge. I am uncertain of when he met Eunice Baty, but they married and their son William Michael Jr. became part of the Baby Boomer generation.
I am unsure of Michael’s early schooling. I think he attended Houston ISD’s Edgar Alan Poe Elementary. His father became a car salesman. My brother was proud of this, as his father was quite good at this. Problem was the father still had some of the misfit in him and he became an alcoholic. Eventually, Eunice divorced him and returned to live with her aunt, Elma Moore, though I remember her as Bubba. She was the wife of Seth Moore and Russel Baty’s sister. This couple had raised my mother after my grandmother became committed to a state sanitarium in San Antonio. I am unsure of when most of these events took place as I was not around yet.
Mike attended Middle School in Phoenix, Arizona. The place our mother moved to as she had to leave Houston when she became pregnant with me. He joined her after my birth in 1958, pleasantly surprised he would say to learn that he was a big brother. He would tell me that times were nice back in the desert. Only problem is mom kept meeting men that were losers and eventually she married one, James Ballard Blakemore, a post office empoyee. Shortly, thereafter Mike had a little sister, Eunice Kay Blakemore, adding to his baby sitting duties. I was five at the time. James and Eunice gathered a lot of debt in the first couple of years of marriage. This prompted them to flee debtors in Phoenix and return to Houston, where now I might be more presentable if you fudged the math.
Houston meant back to Bubba’s house for my brother. The year was 1964 or 1965 and he would live in that house on Woodhead Street for the next 30 years. Uncle Seth had died while we were in Arizona. So Bubba and her daughter Janice Collier, a widow, invited him to stay with them. Something Mike welcomed as it allowed him to leave an abusive stepfather who kept threatening to make him join the Navy despite being underage.
There were certain advantages having a brother 11 years older. And not just the baby sitting or such. He took me to see movies that my parents had no time or inclination to see. I remember going to Fantasia in the Arizona days, frightened by huge dinosaurs and wondering if Mickey could ever stop those bucket carrying brooms. I discovered James Bond at Thunderball and later movies where girls showed their boobs. The advantages of a big brother were keen. A big brother is quite easy to place on a pedestal and I built him a nice one out of glass and paper mache’. Just did not realize it at the time.
He graduated from Houston Lamar like our older cousin Bill and then started college at University of Houston also following cousin Bill. He had his hero too I guess. And I watched these fellows go, I became set on attending Lamar and University of Houston too. Like cousin Bill, my brother dropped out of College. But it was no big deal as Houston had the oil industry and it could take any sharp young man with a brain and make them productive. Eventually he was trained to be a pipe estimator. I cannot remember the names of all of the companies he worked for. SIP is one set of initials that comes to mind. He was doing fairly well in this line of work and then I went off and graduated high school. I left to join the army for eight years and came back just in time for the Houston oil business to have a major fall out in the 1984.
My brother lost his job during this time. And for a while he kept trying to find another position. But things never seemed to pan out. He owned a lot of Exxon stock at the time and he could really stretch a penny. And it was amazing to watch him live. He was my chaffeur when I first entered the University of Houston in 1984. We would eat breakfast every morning and chat up the waitresses. In the evening we walked to the grocery for a pint of ice cream that we would eat on the way back home. A very warm time together. He was still firmly on the pedastal I built for him.
In 1986, mom died a week before Thanksgiving. Her husband had died in May of that same year. Aunt Janice and Mike saw to the details of her burial, while I plodded away at college. I managed to use the event to bring us closer togther and made sure the three siblings had Thanksgiving still. This was the first Thanksgiving that the missus joined us, though at this time she was just the fiance’. When you added Aunt Janice and my best friend Ed that meant dinner for six and it was a nice time for all.
My brother worked for Pier One Imports during this time. A job he found very menial and he hated it. A friend was trying to help him out. Get him onto the management track. Things did not work out. Eventually he left and I am unaware of him working another day of his life. But he knew how to save money and the stocks he had purchased grew in value. His dream was that he and I could work together on a stock system and sit back while our capital appreciated on Wall Street. Problem was he became a procrastinator.
Somewhere in the time that he was out of work he lost confidence in himself. He knew what he wanted to do, but Mike could never pull the trigger and do it. I watched my brother as he took care of Aunt Janice. Running errands for her and such. He was a devoted nephew above and beyond what most folks would do.
My brother loved trains. Growing up around Seth Moore he heard a lot of railroad stories. Uncle Seth worked the Beltline which moved the railcars around Houston for the big railroad companies to move on to other cities. I remember Uncle Seth’s thumb. It was a ugly looking thing as it had got caught in the coupling of a rail car. But Mike heard a lot more of these tales. During the employment years Mike would drive off to Montana and Wyoming following the lines of the Great Northern and Burlington Northern railroad companies. He would stalk trains and take photos of the engines. And he could talk locomotives, expecially diesel locomotives, the same way some guys talk sport cars. He even purchased brass models of locomotives that he fancied. Later in life he would regret those purchases. He sought to sell his brass and this helped him make ends meet I am sure.
Eventually, cousin Bill had to move Aunt Janice into a nursing home. Mike could not take care of her in her frail state. We would go and visit her together from time to time. It was hard on the two of us. Aunt Janice was the toughest women I knew. Mike and I both had our bottoms blistered by her belt as boys. She lost her husband on D-Day in 44 and raised cousin Bill on her own. She had no need for another man she told us. She had us. Seeing her waste away in the retirement home was heart breaking. She would beg us to take her back to her house. We never had the heart to tell her that the properties had been sold and razed. Just another set of townhouses near Montrose.
Mike had to find a place to live and he did. He made a lot of new friends in this time period. He got out more since he did not have to watch Aunt Janice anymore. He even left Houston to live in Hawaii for about a year. But he returned after his housemate committed suicide, jumping off the balcony of the condo they shared. He also made a trip to Las Vegas to visit his stepmother. I do not if she is still alive, but I know his father passed away. I know his dad did visit him from time to time. I never met the senior and I think my brother preferred it like that. I sensed a distance on this subject and I never crossed that line.
In the meantime I became a family man. Mike was a great uncle. He loved my kids. Most Thanksgivings and Christmas holidays he would visit. Sometimes he would just camp out in the house the entire week. It would feel like old times with breakfast and ice cream. He would speak his dreams. I would nod my head knowing that if I put the power in his hand he would never execute. The pedestal was well smashed now. But still he is my brother and I will not kick him to the curb.
When our mother lived she used to make a point of saying she loved us in every conversation. It irked my brother to no end. I never figured out why. Then after mom passed away, he was the one to always say I love you. I guess her death taught him the value of loving your family.
Mike was a January baby like mom and he died in November just as she did. Well a week after Thanksgiving. I spoke to him on the phone before the big day. Making sure he knew that he was invited for dinner. He had plans for dinner with some friends. But Mike said that he would see us for Christmas for sure. He rattled on about things. It was hard to keep my brother on one subject. He would hop scotch from this topic to that topic and then back again. Part of the hop scotch in out last conversation was something about his blood pressure medicine. He was changing something around or he was holding off on getting something. My mind is foggy on this. Yep the same mind that can remember Miss Jin 25 years ago cannot keep a conversation straight from just 3 weeks earlier. But conversation with my brother could do that to you.
Tonight I worked late, which is normal for me. I put in a ten hour day so I can have Fridays off. I’m driving to pick up my daughter and the cell phone rings. I look and see the caller ID says it’s Mike. I answered and there is a woman’s voice. She asks if I am me and I state I am. Then she tells me my brother is dead. The woman is my brother’s neighbor. They have breakfast together often. She was worried that no one has seen Mike for sometime. Other friends notice the same thing. His truck and bikes have not moved. No one has come by. The finally called the morgue and discovered that my brother’s body is there. Just a case number waiting to be claimed. The neighbor has a key and they go into his apartment so they can find my number. Thus the phone call.
I called the Houston morgue and spoke with an investigator there. She infomed me that my brother went to Ben Taub Hospital on November 30th. He complained of stomach pain and tingling in his arm. He then collapsed on the waiting room floor and died on the spot. The examining doctors attributed his death to cardiovascular disease associated with high blood pressure. I wonder if he finally procrastinated himself to death by not getting his medicine?
I am saddened that I did not have an opportunity to tell my brother farewell. Though I have no regrets. My brother is a Christian and therefore I know in death he has achieved victory over that death and is now in heaven. No more sorrows. No more failures. No more procrastinations. He is now catching up with mom and Aunt Janice. Right on time. And when God’s time is right, I shall embrace him and say hello once more.
