Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been mulling about the term "intervention" because I wonder about my brother, and if there is something more I might have done.  I had done interventions with him when he was drinking, and the last one led to his sobriety.  I also spoke to him right after the reading of our father's will, and that consisted of my explaining that all his blusteriness was a result of feeling guilty about not helping more with our father's illness and not being willing to help settle the estate.  He didn't speak to me for two years, but when he did begin interacting again he was warmer and no B.S.

Should I have told him what his notes seemed like when I read them?  They seemed like delusions, or an extraordinary embellishment of whatever his reality might have been.  I never said, bluntly, perhaps seeing a therapist would be helpful.  He was so afraid of being labeled or caught up in the medical system.  He was paranoid.  Honestly, he'd been hurt so much I didn't wish to hurt him further.  His self esteem was so damaged, and I thought it harmless to let him tell his stories of success and travels to me, the judgmental older sister,  the proverbial wet blanket.

I certainly know I could not have gotten him help without his cooperation, and he'd had our dad looking over his shoulder his whole life, and I honored his desire to cease having to please his family.  I hoped he was happy, and I don't know that he wasn't, but it was not enough.  I know I offered nothing he really needed, and I didn't know what he did need.  Could he have been helped?  I'll never have the answer to that.  Was I a person who could have helped?  No.  I was associated too closely with our parents, our childhood, his drinking twenty years.  I was not the answer.

But right now I regret not telling him one time that his tales sounded like fantasies to me, and I wished he would tell me something real about how he was feeling.  He didn't talk about feelings, not ever, and like our father, he thought them better left in the dark, like a shameful secret.  I cannot quite imagine how an intervention might have worked, or what it would have looked like, but it's elusiveness haunts me.