Death of an Actor Hits Close to Home

Story below about the Death of "Wheels", played by Neil Hope from DeGrassi Jr High.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=147075417

Last night while sitting back and watching a movie news spread across the internet like a flu virus I just didn't want to accept I had.  The internet was wrought with news that former child actor Neil Hope had passed away, but the shocker here is that he died 5 years ago.  No one knew until last month; not his family nor his friends.

Neil died alone, in a boarding room in Canada supposedly of Natural Causes.  He was 35.

Beyond just trying to digest that someone you grew up with has died at such a young age, it's also an almost impossible task to absorb the circumstances surrounding his death.  How could anyone be so estranged from his loved ones that he could die without their knowledge for 5 years?  Friends and family say that it was not uncommon for Neil to go a year or so without contact, but after two years they became worried that something might have happened.  Wow!  And then just over four years later they find out he's been dead all along.

If this is too much for a Degrassi fan to digest imagine how the family and his close friends are dealing with it.

The character of Wheels both emotionally and physcially remind me of my own brother Ed, whom I have had no contact with in many years.  In fact, no one in my family has heard from him in over three years.  Given his emotional history and drug history, its hard for us to know where Eddie is or if  he is even alive.  It has helped my many times to assume that he is dead, rather than accept the idea that he would purposefully estrange himself from our family and not want anything to do with us. 

His life has been similar to Wheels and I guess also Neil; wounded boys who craved the love of father's who either didn't want them or were to drunk to be bothered. Neils father was an alcoholic who died early, Wheels father didn't want him, and Wheels became an alcoholic, and then there is my brother who has been rejected by my alcoholic father over and over again.

So upon reading the story of Neil's death I got to wondering. Is my brother dead?  When did he die?  Is he living alone in some boarding room?  Is he alive? Where is he? Am I ever going to see him again?  And if he's dead, where is he buried? In some unmarked grave, in some random cemetary?

So not only do I share the grief of the death of Neil Hope, but I am also losing hope that my own brother hasn't shared the same fate.