Turning Pain into Purpose: How My Brother’s Struggles and Love for Music Inspired The Soul Juice Band
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Finding Strength Through Struggles
So I remember my brother being strong and someone to be feared by a little guy like me. I wasn’t just 5 years younger than him, but I also was a really small kid. I, like him, got picked on most of my life because of this. Even when I was in high school as a sophomore, I was only 4’10” and 84 pounds…lol. And I was stupid enough to play high school football, basketball, and baseball even though I was really small. Because of this, you can imagine I got picked on mercilessly, and I played and practiced angry most of the time to try and fight back against all of this mistreatment. I would’ve probably hurt somebody really bad if my dad hadn’t been in my life. He was a pretty hot-tempered guy, and the last thing I wanted to do was to get in trouble with him.
A Life Built on Shared Challenges
Anyway, I digress. Back to my brother…. So as we grew up together, we made a big move into the home of my real dad and his wife when I was around 8. I won’t go into all the dynamics there, but it wasn’t good, and my brother and I continued to form a strong bond through traumas we experienced together. He often didn’t follow the food guidelines of being a type I diabetic and sometimes ended up at the hospital because of it.
After he left the house to go to college, he decided he didn’t really want to go to class his freshman year and ended up with like a 0.9 GPA… lol. He even won an award that he kept and I found when I boxed up his things for “Most missed class days as a freshman” on his dorm floor… dude, lol. I often kept track of him and his health even though I went away to college and finished my degree in physical therapy, which was crazy difficult. I had to pay my entire way through college after my freshman year because both my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t help me.
A Brother’s Health Battles and Resilience
As we both walked through adulthood, my brother made some rather unfortunate decisions, but one of his good ones was finding a good lady to be his wife, and he had a daughter with her. Her name is Brittany, and she’s a cool chick.
As Ric got older, the many years of him rebelling against his eating guidelines and not monitoring his blood sugar, etc., caught up with him. He ended up with severe kidney damage and nerve damage in his legs. He had to get laser surgeries on his eyes to keep his vision and suffered innumerable health problems that put him through a lot.
One time, he caught the “flesh-eating bacteria” and was going to lose his leg, but a surgeon told me he thought he could save his foot, and I asked him to do everything he could to do it. After he almost died from the infection, the surgeon was able to save it, and he kept it until he died.
The Day My World Shifted Forever
When my brother passed away, I wasn’t ready for it. I was living in Vegas and going to see him in Indiana in two weeks from the day I got that fateful phone call. I had to make all of his arrangements and go through his little house and pack up all the things that made him who he is and the memories he kept in boxes, etc.
To this day, I have 10-12 boxes of his stuff that I still can’t really bear to open and part with. It’s all too painful because my brother was kinda all I had, and I was all he had. We were very different people but had a deep and lasting bond that is difficult to describe. I was basically his only person who helped take care of him and was on the phone with doctors when he would be in the hospital, etc. I was the one he asked all his difficult questions to.
A Purposeful Realization: The Birth of The Soul Juice Band
When Ric passed, as I was boxing all of his things up, I had a very clarifying thought come to my mind. I said to myself, “One day, someone will box up all my things. What haven’t I done that I need to do in my life that wouldn’t have a box if I died right now?”
One thing that came to my mind is that I’d always loved music and wanted to have my own band. I had just focused on raising my kids and being a medical professional and never put any plan into action to make it happen.
Plus, while I was boxing up his stuff, I realized what a lonely, painful existence my brother had, living by himself and going to all these doctor’s appointments, dialysis appointments, etc. I noticed he had a HUGE CD collection. He used to be a DJ in college, and music was always so important to him.
Music: The Lifeline That Kept Us Going
I realized that the music he listened to helped keep him alive and moving forward for so many years. As he suffered year after year, the sounds of the Dazz Band, Chicago, Midnight Star, and other bands kept him getting up each day to face his challenges.
Music kept my brother alive and kept him from giving up. He and I would often talk about music and listen to each other’s recommendations, etc. (cont. in part 3).
