I Couldn’t Stand Him — Then He Died of Coronavirus

My former brother-in-law died this week from Covid-19. He’d been on a respirator for seven days.

There was no love between Carl and me. About 15 years ago, Carl walked out on my sister after 25 years of marriage. Julie was 50 at the time. I first met Carl when I was 19 and visiting my sister in Seattle. He was her new boyfriend. On that first trip, I caught Carl rummaging through her medicine cabinet, looking for any drugs she might not miss. When I tracked sand into my sister’s apartment after a day at the beach, Carl criticized me for not using the vacuum cleaner correctly. He thought I was a spoiled little princess. He wasn’t completely wrong.

From my point of view, he was mean to my sister. A drunk and a drug addict, Carl was withdrawn, living in his own world, and careless with their children. Once my sister came home from errands to find their four-year-old son on the roof. In fact, Carl was careless with everything. On a family vacation to the Florida Keys, he went snorkeling with the rental car keys in his pocket. A Hertz truck had to drive 64 miles from Miami to deliver a replacement.

Certainly my sister played her part in the disastrous relationship, but his departure threw her into a bout of panic attacks, which led to its own ramifications.