Remembrances of my brother, Melvin
March 10, 2018
My brother, Melvin Carter Torian, Junior, died sometime in his sleep on Wednesday night March 7, 2018. He was 81 years old, just shy by one week and two days (his birthday being on March 16) of his 82nd birthday.
Melvin was the son of Evelyn Robertson Torian and Melvin Carter Torian, Senior, who had him in 1936, a period of turmoil and distress in America. The turmoil and stress would continue for another nine years as the country would enter the world war. This turmoil and stress would, I believe, affect Melvin, especially since his father would participate in the war and be away for large periods of time while Melvin was just becoming of an age when consciousness of father, mother, and home develops positively or negatively, or somewhere in-between. This turmoil and stress would haunt Melvin throughout his life, unknowingly to him.
I do not remember much interaction with Melvin until he went off to college at the University of Michigan. This is because he was eight years older, it was that at this time, at the time he left for university, tension between Melvin and our father rose beyond the trivial. Melvin failed at university in the first semester and moved on to the Western Michigan University for the second semester, where he succeeded. At the same time of his beginning at Western Michigan the rest of the family, me, and our parents, went back to Virginia, from Michigan, as my father was transferred (he was in the Navy). Melvin should have stayed at Western Michigan University but our father, being a domineering, irrational-at-times person (I am sure he was suffering from post-trauma stress syndrome due to his service during the war) insisted that Melvin come back to Virginia and enrolled at the University of Virginia. Unfortunately, during his first semester at the University of Virginia he was in a serious automobile accident, and subsequently to that he never returned on a path to college graduation.
It was during this time, just after the automobile accident, when he was 21 that I started to really follow and interact with Melvin’s journey – his life’s adventures – and would be intertwined with them off and on, for the rest of his life. And it is of the remembrances from this time that I focus on with respect to who Melvin was and his life.
I remember strongly Melvin saying frequently “This is the way I think about things, this is the way I am.” He had a world view, a way of thinking of things, a reaction to his external, that was often at odds for successful interactions with the world, with the external. What accounted for this, whether some of the stress and turmoil in his early life, wrote about above, or other externals, e.g., father-mother relationships, or internals, e.g., sexual, mental influences, his life journey would be a difficult one in many respects as that journey interacted with the surroundings. But he would always remain true to what he said often “This is the way I think about things, this is the way I am,” and such did not often fit him well to the rest of the world.
My brother and I had our difficulties in our relationship. An enjoyable time was after my return from Germany in 1984, having separated from my wife and son, and being on a new course for myself. From around that time into the early 90s, Melvin and I would visit one another, him with me in Maryland, overnight, and I with him in Norfolk. During that time, he was into attending plays put on by the local Norfolk theater groups and I remember going with him to some of these. He was also big on going to yard sales and often told me, showed me what he considered to be good, interesting buys that he was proud of. I remember playing tennis with him on one of these trips to Norfolk. As a teenager, Melvin was very much into tennis and was proud of being on the high school tennis team and knowing tennis players who would go on to high rankings in the tennis world. During this 1980s period, I remember taking a trip with him out to Halifax County, Virginia to visit sites related to our Torian ancestry. We shared an interest in family history. It was during this period when Max, my son, a young teenager at the time, and I would swing through Norfolk on our way to see Mother in Florida. They were pleasant visits hoping to foster family ties.
Before I went to Germany and was still married, I had a lot less contact with Melvin. This was a period from around the time I left our parents’ home at around age 21 until I left for Germany at around age 36 (from the middle 60s to the early 80s). What I remember of this period, a period I considered to be another distinct period in Melvin’s life, contrasting with other periods, was of his marriage and a very quick end to it, the birth of his son Keith, Melvin’s struggles with the end of the marriage and dealings with Carolee, his ex-wife, with his being a father and wanting to maintain his role as such, with problems he was having finding suitable work, with him experiencing detours on his work path, such as spending time at the Portsmouth Naval Yard’s Shipbuilding Apprentice School, which he ended up dropping, and then finally at the end of this period with him settling into a civil service position with the Navy. I do not think this was a very pleasant period for Melvin. He was struggling during this period, a lot, much more than later, for example, in the 1980s period I write about above. And he was badly hurting. One pleasant thing I remember during this 60s to 80s period was his participation in my marriage. I also remember how devoted he was to Keith, his son, buying lots of gifts at birthdays, Christmases and at other times, and how he took so many pictures of Keith, which he was anxious to share with me. A guilt, a regret I have carried with me, is that I was not a more caring, concerned, loving brother than I was during this period.
It was during this 60s to 80s period Melvin became a Catholic. About him becoming and being a Catholic, I should share a few remembrances. He appeared to accept and obey faithfully Catholic doctrine and practices. As far as I know, he never missed going to mass, even when he visited with me or our mother. He served for many years at his church as a communion helper, administering the elements. He was immensely proud of that function and often spoke of it. Also, he was a frequent attendee at Catholic retreats. He kept a record of his retreat attendances and was proud of the number he went to. He spoke frequently of the two overseas trips he took with Catholic groups, one to Mexico City and one to Rome. I believe this turning to Catholicism was a major boost to Melvin’s mental outlook and health and led to his becoming a more contented person in the 1980s and after. In 1984, when I came back from Germany, he seemed to me to be a much happier person than in the 60s and 70s. The 80s and 90s was a better time for him.
I should write a few words about my remembrances on the relationship that Melvin had with our father. Our father loved us and wanted well for us. As a first son, and one with so much seemingly promise when young (I was the opposite), my father held out extremely high hopes and expectations for Melvin. That these hopes and expectations, which are usually damaging for all concerned, were never satisfied, as far as my father was concerned, and was a cause for strain in their relationship. Although Melvin and Dad continue to have contact for most of Dad’s life (he died in 1984), difficulties were usually present and, in fact, became so acute that our father asked Melvin to stop contacting him five years before Dad’s death (as told to me by Melvin). And Melvin had very adverse feelings toward his father. For example, Melvin left off his head stone placed on the grave site he purchased before his death, his father’s name. I never heard Melvin use hateful language about our father, which in a way may have been a problem reflecting a very confused emotional state about his father. Melvin had a lot of issues concerning his father that might had started back at the time of his youth when the world he entered had such turmoil and stress (as mentioned above). And these issues affected Melvin’s mental state.
When I came back from Germany (mentioned above), Melvin and I set out on a good period in our relationship. It was during his time (in response to our father’s death) that we recognized that our mother would need a lot of assistance in maintaining her welfare and so Melvin and I were in a situation of developing how we would coordinate and cooperate with one another in providing the needed assistance for our mother. A complexity in this assistance and the needed coordination and cooperation was that she lived in Florida and he in Virginia and I in Maryland. I think we did manage to work out the needed coordination and cooperation and provided well for our mother. But, in the early 2000s it became obvious that Mother, now in her 90s, was reaching a stage where she could no longer live alone in Florida. So, this was an important milestone where we had to make some tough decisions, and there were serious disagreements about the decisions, with our previously positive coordination and cooptation becoming negative.
A major problem was her condominium, whether to sell or keep it as a rental property, and where she was to live. Fortunately, the condominium was sold, and we agreed to have Mother live with us starting in 2003, rotating between us, in equal periods. This living arrangement worked fine until she had a major fall in 2005 at age 96, broke her hip, and ended up not being able to walk without assistance, and with a major loss of cognitive abilities. These conditions met she needed constant care. This created a severe problem between Melvin and I, because I decided to provide this care in Maryland, without Melvin’s consent. In a following paragraph, I write about Melvin’s health during this period. Because of his poor health, he was unable to meet the needed tasks and therefore I feel deciding without Melvin’s consent was the right thing to do.
It was during this time, after Mother started living with me full time in 2005 that Melvin and my relationship really went sour, and we had a challenging time talking to one another on the phone without it going crazy. Mother died in 2007, and that met Melvin had to execute the will, and I had to interact with him as best I could to aid the process, and it was difficult, exceedingly difficult. By the time the will’s execution was completed in late 2008, our relationship was toxic – neither one of us wanted to have anything to do with the other again. And we did not, for weeks, quickly extending into months, which quickly extended into years, until in January 2018 we reconnected, just three months before Melvin’s death, after being estranged for more than nine years.
At the time of our mother’s last years, 2003 to 2007, Melvin became even more overweigh, struggling just to walk around, suffering from high blood pressure, and other health problems, including poor mental health. He was not a happy person which was a major cause. I mention a toxic relationship above developing at around this time and suggested some of it was due to decisions about our mother’s keeping. But it was more than that. His poor health was a big part of it. When we reconnected in January 2018, we spoke on the phone for about 30 minutes, the first time we had spoken in nine years, and I was startled by the conversation. The conversation was one of the best, most reconciling, kindest, considered, constructing, and polite conversations that we had ever had. It was as if he was a different person. He told me of the 100 or more pounds he had lost, of the exercises he did every day in his apartment, of his changes in physiology and anatomy that aging had brought on, of Keith’s visits and help with transportation, of Michael’s (Keith’s son) upcoming marriage, of his not driving any longer, of his not have gone to mass for five years, of how he would walk up to nearby stores, and of his apartment. I immediately wanted to see him and told him so, and I worked out a time that I could do that, being March 22 and 23. I was very much looking forward to this visit and spending time with him. I will always regret and be sad that I was not able to make that visit, with him dying only two weeks prior to the day I was to see him.I
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I got to know Melvin better than anyone else, except for his son Keith. I saw a side of Melvin that others may not have seen, and that was a fundamental essence of who he was - he was an extremely sweet, kind, caring person. And being so, I suspect he had extreme sensitivity in the interactions he encountered in the world and how he viewed these interactions. That sensitivity created a different Melvin in his reactions to a lot of the external world – created a shield, a protection, a frequent “This is the way I think about things, this is the way I am” reaction, a very stubborn persona, as his life unfolded, as he encountered the world. It was this shield, this stubbornness that people mostly encountered, not his essence, his very sweetness and kindness.
I also saw throughout his life, from the birth of his son, a father who looked upon Keith as the greatest thing in his life, a true devotion that was unyielding, and never died, right up to the last night of his life, when I suspect he was eager to see Keith the next morning, when Keith was coming to take him to a doctor’s appointment. I suspect Melvin’s best feelings, greatest joy in life came from Keith.
I also saw a person who was very devoted to his faith. I suspect Melvin’s faith sustained him and was a major reason, along with Keith, for him enduring the turmoil and stress that were part of his life.
As I re-read and review these remembrances, it strikes me just how much Melvin, and I remained as “family;” just how much the periods I identify for his life correspond to periods of my life.
I loved my brother, and I hope he was happy in his last few years, as he was happy in earlier periods. I spent a lot of time, as an 8-year younger brother, following him and living, in a sense, experiences that he had. I will miss him.