So my brother is 50 and I just found out he went into hospice care and doesn't have much longer to live. He never married so there's no wife or kids. He's been an alcoholic and drug addict his entire life (started drinking at the age of 9 - we had a bar in our basement growing up). He's also a pathological liar and I swear has a sociopathic personality. He's never felt remorse and has never known right from wrong. I'm saying all this because we've never been close and I stopped all contact with him 6 years ago when he moved to another state. The stress I was feeling and all the pain he has caused my family with his lies and getting into trouble just wasn't worth it to me anymore. He has HIV and never did any of the treatment even though my parents were going to pay for it. He got pneumonia and an infection a few weeks ago and just never got better. The hospital finally convinced him to go into hospice care. We think he was living on the street because he told the doctors he was homeless. My parents were paying his rent and all his bills (a co-dependency relationship that didn't help things), so I don't know why he was on the street. I guess he spent all the money they gave him for rent and treatment on drugs. I feel very sad that he's dying, more that it was such a waste when it didn't have to be this way. I'm also concerned about my parents since they've spent most of their lives trying to save him, so when he's gone, I'm not sure what they're going to do with themselves. You would think they'd feel relief, but they might feel empty with no one to rescue. I'll be an only child then, so I hope they don't start getting more clingy to me. I don't have a very good relationship with them either, mostly because they always put my brother first and pushed me to the side, so I have some resentment built up.

I think we've all been expecting something like this to happen. None of us expected him to outlive my parents, but it's still a shock that it's actually happening. I'm trying not to feel guilty for not feeling sad about losing a brother because I never had a brother. It's like feeling sad about an acquaintance you hear that's dying, not a sibling. Of course I don't know how I'll actually feel once he's gone, and I've never even been to a funeral before, so that will be weird. I feel like not many people will even show up. He didn't have many friends. He used people to get what he needed and then dropped them.