“Go wait outside”, that was the first thing I heard from my dad the man who doesn’t even live with us anymore after a long day of school in the sixth grade. So I sat outside in the sun for what felt like hours playing with the grass and looking at the sky until my dad came outside gave me a kiss and went on his way back to his house in Brockton. It was weird because he doesn’t come down to our house that often and especially without letting me know or at least telling my mom first but I shrugged it off like It was nothing until I went into the house and my mom didn’t look to happy. She had told me something like “your role model of a brother just got suspended for a whole week of school” now my brother Ryan was never a saint but he would never get in trouble this bad from what my mom would tell me and I didn’t find out for a while that it was because he had been caught by the drug dogs at his school for having weed in his locker which would be the start to a lot of bad decisions and mishaps in his life in the coming years. Everyday for that week that he was suspended I would come home to a mother that seemed more stressed than she has been in a very long time and a brother attached to a video game console that I would always be on so I was very bored for that whole time that he had nothing to do so he took my hobby over. My mom would always go up to my brother though this week saying things like “shouldn’t you be doing homework” or “don’t you have something from school to be doing” and my brother would always give the same lies saying he didn’t or they didn’t give him any which we both knew was a straight lie. This became the longest week of hearing the same complaints and the same response but after that week was over it was like it never happened in the first place and we all went on our merry ways like we always have and everything was fine except for a few small things that happened leading up to a very big outburst in the summer leading up to my senior year of high school.
Now this was like nothing that we have ever seen him do ever before it came out of no wear and I have never been more confused in my life. I got a call from my mom and I answer right away the very first thing she told me was “Brandon don’t get upset but your brother had a bad out burst at work and he was taken my an ambulance to a mental hospital on the cape” now I didn’t get upset at all I was just beyond baffled that something like this just happened. I came home right away from what I was doing and my mom was just heading out to go see him and planned to meet my dad there and that was all I heard about it for a while. My mom came back at night saying that “Ryan is going to be okay and he just needs some time the doctors said that he was probably under a lot of stress and he finally burst” and I just thought what could of brought this upon him he never seemed like the type to ever get stressed by anything kinda like me which is a blessing and curse at the same time but I could just tell from looking at her that she had been crying and she was overwhelmed with stress and concern for him and I count imagine what my dad was thinking right now but I would soon find out. Both of them and other people in my family would go on repeated visits for him and they would always tell me that he will get better with time but I wanted to see for myself so when I got the chance I went to visit with my grammy, papa, and my mom and dad. When we got there I could tell that my dad had been crying for the first time in my life I could see tears in his eyes and it was the most heart breaking thing that I have ever seen, the man in my life that I had always known to be strong was finally broken and I would of never though this would be the thing to push him to the edge I would of thought he would say what he always does which is usually just “suck it up” or “get over it” but I got the complete opposite he even admitted to me that he was over crying over this and that he wanted him to just return to his normal goofy self. Through all the years of my life at that point I have never seen my family so gloomy in my life and it was because of my brothers breakdown when I saw him he looked visibly off like something was wrong with him mentally like he actually belonged there and I knew he didn’t he was just having a hard time and he just blew he was stress ridden and it finally became to much for him to bear. When we all sat there on that table he would keep saying things like “there watching me” and “there keeping me here and wont let me go’ or something like that and we would all tell him that he’s not making sense and he needs to calm down so he can get out of that place and back home were he belongs. We didn’t stay there long but he wasn’t there that long either but the experience lasted in all of our heads the time when the troubled child couldn’t take all the stress that accumulated within him and it scarred all of us to see him like this the brother I never thought could exist.
After reading Brandon’s memoir draft is sounding really good. I can tell how emotional he gets about what happened to his brother and how it effected his family. he talks about how his brother was acting before the incident occurred. The main message is basically saying that even the trouble child can’t take the amount of stress that had been built up inside. The line that really sticks out to me in a personal way is “for the first time in my life I could see tears in his eyes and it was the most heart breaking thing that I have ever seen, the man in my life that I had always known to be strong was finally broken and I would of never though this would be the thing to push him to the edge”, because I’ve never seen my dad cry until something bad happened to his best friend, I can really connect to this on a personal level because of the amount of family inside of hospitals.
Some sharp moments and/or details in the authors writing is when he goes into telling why his brother had gotten suspended, and how that had lead up to him bursting out and ending up in a mental hospital. could maybe add more detail about how the family felt when they would go and see him and how you felt when you first saw your brother. So far the memoir sounds good interns of detail, and showing just how much support his brother had during this rough time.
The most successful part of this memoir is the end when he starts going into further detail about his brothers condition. What’s working well is that he can get readers hooked into his writing. The only things that I would maybe change is the fact that he uses to many run on sentences. and that it’s sometimes hard to comprehend the word choice and the way sentences are created through out the whole piece sometimes. I had a hard time understanding the sentences at some points which would then make me reread a couple of sentences trying to understand what the author was trying to say. I would also suggest reading over the paper again because there are some grammar and spelling issues. Through out the memoir there would be moments where the word choice would make my mind hiccup and make the moment of reading into a sentence again to understand the statement. Over all this is a really interesting memoir it is a really interesting topic to read about and I’m proud to have read the memoir and been about to help out the author with any hiccups they might have along the way.
This is a powerful essay on an important issue that many can relate to: the challenges a family faces when one of its members has a mental illness. The title is effective. For me, one of the most resonant lines comes at the end: “We didn’t stay there long but he wasn’t there that long either but the experience lasted in all of our heads…” I think as you revise, you might want to think a bit about what your central message is about that experience, what you learned or how it changed you. (You also seem to be looking at your relationship to your parents–you might want to think about how that connects as well–initially I thought essay was going to be about your relationship with your father, and maybe it is, to some degree.)
You do show bits of scenes here, mostly in the form of dialogue and glimpses of people’s faces. You could make it more visual in places, so reader can see what’s happening (the emotions are clear). Also you might want to show a bit more about your relationship with your brother, both before and after this experience.
In addition, in revision think about paragraphing. I think both of those large paras. could be broken up. Also, as reviewer points out, there are quite a few run-ons here, as well as what I think are typos. Here’s some info about run-ons if you want to brush up: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/runons.htm