Dad keeps calling me by the name of my brother who went NC – how do I proceed?

So I’m awake at 2 am writing this on mobile while overthinking so excuse any mistakes pls.

Last day of vacation with my family and I (late 20s NB) have once again this week been called by the name of my brother (late 30s) who has been NC with the family since late 2016. My dad (early 60s M) is a sweetheart, but he’s always struggled with mixing up names as dad’s do. The names are pretty similar, like for example Carrie and Carl, so it’s understandable, but it still hurts everytime – a frequency of 0-2 times a month.

I’m in the late stages of grieving the loss of brother and am currently slipping between anger and acceptance. He was a rock in my life through my childhood, as he was 9 years my senior and adored me more than my older sisters ever since I came out of the womb. We were the odd ones in the family, both getting diagnosed with autism in adulthood. Having that understanding together while the rest of the family tried it’s best but couldn’t quite fit us in made us very tight. He even told me, a few months before we were cut off, that I was the reason he decided he wanted kids because I meant so much to him in his teenagehood.

The break up was messy and took its toll on the family, and multiple members went through stress and depression. After he left parents and sisters did a lot of work to include me and integrate me better into family dynamics, only after brother voiced things realising we were struggling. All in all we’ve come out as a stronger unit, but he refused to be a part of that process due to a loss of trust in my parents, especially my mom. It’s still hard to talk about amongst ourselves, however, especially with my mom (early 60s F) who became the scapegoat of all my parents’ mishandlings of him during the arguments leading up to the NC.

There are things I accepted from at the time I now struggle to forgive. He’s missed many events, among others my whole transitioning and the absolute hell of a journey it was to get through the cracks as an NB slipping between my country’s stated laws. There are many times I needed him and he wasn’t there. There are times I nearly hate him because of how badly he handled the situation. I understand why he had to cut our parents off, cause he wasn’t in a mental place to handle more misunderstandings. I forgave him already then when he told me over the phone that he couldn’t see me anymore, telling him that I only wanted him to do what was best for him. I would be waiting on the other side if it ever came, ready to forgive and reconcile even if it took ten years. But in my anger I no longer know if that’s a promise I can keep, and I don’t understand why he came to my parents with ultimatums rather than dialogue. How he could refuse to to include a family therapist because ‘a proper family is meant to fix things alone’. Why he cut off his siblings – why he cut off ME – when he could have left it at mom and dad. I explained away and excused for a long time but it got too much about a year and a half ago.

My dad using his name started about half a year after I started on testosterone, when my body shape really began getting masculine. I always looked a lot like my brother physically, we had the same physical quirks and such, and I presume I may look a bit like a squished version of him now. We also have the same laugh and verbal quirks when explaining things, but I dunno if we now sound alike too. But it hurts everytime, and it leads to an awkward second before the conversation continues.

It happened again during this vacation with my sisters also present, and while no one lingered I felt it again. Two nights later I had another dream which ended in me yelling at him and his family why they had to leave and how dared they just show up. I think the name might have triggered that, and will try to keep a pattern of it as such dreams are an irregular occurrence that I haven’t been able to find a pattern in… It cuts deep every time.

At the same time it’s not on purpose and I know. I assume it maybe part of his own processing, or maybe solely just… mistake. He obviously knows I and others notice, but every time he scrambles to move on. It’s left an elephant in the room as we pretend everything is fine. Do I talk to him about it? Is this a moment to grieve together, or do I risk embarrassing him? Do I let him bring it up? How would I even start a conversation? Should I just try to deal with this in therapy or something? Because of my closeness with brother people are sensitive about mentioning it…

TL;DR dad (early 60s M) keep calling me (late 20s NB) by my brother’s (late 30) name. Brother has been no contact for years, and before that we were extremely close and it hurts sm. I don’t know if I should talk to dad about this in search of closure or leave it be, nor do I know how to approach the topic… Please help with advice and suggestions.

EDIT: Additional information about the problems between my parents and brother added after being requested + mother’s age.

TL;DR on EDIT: my parents did their best to raise my brother well but couldn’t always meet his needs which left him feeling abandoned and neglected. My mother got blamed due to her lack of outward emotional responses. Resentment got out of control after my mother’s awkward response to some emotional vulnerability and resentment grew untamed over years without being brought up directly. SIL potentially increased the resentment in attempt to protect brother. The ‘final showdown’ happens with me on the sidelines cheering for a solution between them that was unreachable. Brother was in too much pain to be met with anything but affirmation and either side struggled to see the other’s truth. I believe both sides believe all they’ve said as I know neither side to lie. 6 years now passed since he left and my conundrum remains…

My brother is the oldest of four, 9 years older than me and born mid 80s. My parents quickly realized that he was different (autism, at age 5-7), but no health professional they brought it up to confirmed any concerns. My parents ignorantly accepted this though in their defense, the diagnosis barely existed in my country until mid-late 90s and was only given if you struggled with retardation. My brother was very intelligent and coasted through school academically, so he fell under the radar until age 24-25. My parents decided to simply support him as he was so long he experienced no bullying in school, but they worried severely about loneliness. No attempt to support him in getting friends succeeded – among instances they’ve later mentioned as the turmoil of his break-off settled was encouraging him to talk with the kids who he lent out his pencils to in class and encouraging him to talk with a kid who always sat with him in the school bus because they’d heard from the boy’s parents that he REALLY wanted to be my brother’s friend.

My brother remembers this as an extremely lonely time which extended through all his teenage years, and he vividly remember my coming into his life as one of the very few lights in a very dark existence. As he’s grown older this has developed into a feeling of abandonment and neglect from my parents’ side, as he feels they should have done better. This is further exasperated by him being the oldest for multiple reasons: first parenting is a skill with a learning curve and he got the shortest end of the stick while as the youngest, I got the longest by being allowed the most things that my parents worried letting my older siblings do. Second, my parents were still studying at the time of his birth, so he experienced moving homes twice and cities once where my oldest sister only tried it once, so early life may have been slightly more tumultuous. My parents always did their best to raise us as independent and respected individuals, teaching us through dialogue rather than scolding or punishment and letting us come to as many conclusions as possible on our own. This is mostly how my father was raised, while my mother vehemently pursued this approach due to the restraints put on her by her mother.

Additionally, in my childhood not a lot of emotions were shared in my family. While there were never any arguments between them, my oldest sister at 13 even had a period where she feared my parents would get a divorce because they never showed each other affection like the parents of her friends did. Kisses and hugs basically disappeared after appr. 5 years old, more heavily from mom than dad. This is another leftover of my mother’s upbringing, as showing emotions was considered shameful in her childhood home, and one of her most vivid memories is getting scolded by her mother at 17 years old for ’embarrassing’ her grandfather – because she gave him a speech so heartfelt at his 70th birthday party that he started having tears down his cheeks in front of the whole family. My mother didn’t realize how this was an issue until about a year before my brother went NC, and l think my very kind and sensitive father was protecting the love of his life from trauma. My mother’s emotional restraints are one of the shields she’s used to handle many issues in life. Instead, they try to make up for this through acts of kindness, but before adulthood this unfortunately translate only into simply giving your child support they are entitled to anyway.

Very simply, my parents were the type to set themselves on fire to keep their kids warm.

All this translate into both me and my brother not understanding how much we were loved despite a very supportive environment because autistic we needed verbal confirmation to understand. Nonverbal communication wasn’t enough. Neither of us felt a part of the family, nor to any other people or community in society, and we just held on to one another, me using him as a pillar in life. To make this more complicated, like many autistic children, neither me nor my brother developed a proper rebellious phase as teens, meaning the natural development of adult boundaries between parents and children didn’t occur. Both of us fell into childhood roles we’d outgrown with no knowledge on how to change it, my brother more than me.

My brother’s high school sweetheart, first gf and later wife is the first to really truly connect with him other than me, and the only one to who was actually around his age. She went through a rough childhood with a physically abusive, mentally ill dad, a depressed and repressed mother who left her to live with said dad most of the time until he was imprisoned and grandparents who were my nation’s version of Mormon extremists. My SIL is the one to recognize his diagnosis due to her closeness with mental illness and get him to professionals. Unfortunately when my parents were presented this, my mother was initially shocked and didn’t respond well, asking questions and not understanding what it was and how it worked and how that could be possible in what she perceived as her otherwise well-functioning son. The conversation happened in the time where I finally cracked as a teenager and mentally broke down, and my needs in the subsequent severe depression where symptoms previously manifesting psycho-somatically broke out in full force restlessness, lethargy, insomnia, constant burst of crying and all that jazz became immense as we had to navigate the social systems for the first time. This is a time where my parents admits to being heavily inadequate despite doing their best to support their other kids, and the younger og my older sister who was always more independent moved out right after 18 cause she couldn’t handle living in the same house as me, suppressing her needs for my parents’ attention because I ‘needed it more’. Additionally, my parents would babysit my oldest nephew every weekend or so to relieve my brother while he worked on his PhD and SIL as she dropped out of her first education.

My brother left the meeting extremely hurt, but it only took my mother about a week of research to realize that autism indeed fit my brother’s profile. They never had a follow up conversation that my mother owed him because she didn’t realize how badly he experienced the encounter, something she today regrets. Brother’s hurt is only increased when I get my diagnosis two years later without any issue or restraint from mother. My SIL struggled to assimilate into the family except for me (how could she when my brother struggled himself?), and after this, or maybe even some time before, she started villainizing my mother as a controlling mafia boss in the family who refused to adapt to the current age and couldn’t comprise. At the time, a part of this was true since my mother keeps her immediate surroundings in tight control to reduce her stress levels and my father had no need to wrestle that control from her.

Exasperated by my mother’s seeming emotionless making her seem a lot more forceful than she intends, this started a lot of issues between them. Brother and SIL was certain that she was scarring my oldest nephew in a similar way that brother was because he was exhibiting signs of autism at age 3-4 even if my mother swears that he expressed on multiple occasions how much he loved the weekends with Grandma and Grandpa and was happy to be at the farm to his little brother. SIL says they couldn’t make mother compromise on how to do Christmas now that kids were involved, which is something I don’t doubt knowing how she was at the time – very stressed because of my mental health and trying to protect a family she felt was constantly skidding around on thin ice. Brother and SIL secretly thinks that my parents have the kids too much, being there every weekend, but think my parents expect this, while on the other side my slowly aging and pretty pressured parents started wondering when brother and SIL are ready to take more charge of the kids now that brother finished his PhD. According to my parents, none of these issues are properly presented (I assume because SIL and brother expected another ‘I have autism’ response), while my brother claims he tried many times to mention some of the things but was brushed off.

Things culminate August 2015 when SIL have a mental breakdown with flashbacks to childhood trauma. My parents are called since SIL’s family is unreliable to take the kids. While brother and dad corral the boys and find the needed things, mom goes to SIL who is in the other room, still struggling and in panic. Mom asks her; “Are you in contact with a therapist? Do you have medication? Are there anyone you can call?” in allegedly rapid succession. From my mom, this was meant to be caring, worried and helpful. To SIL, it was heard demanding, controlling and overbearing.

This is basically the last time SIL spoke my mom. She was busy every family gathering since but nothing was verbalised from either side for various reasons. The full family conflict then starts at oldest nephews bday half a year later when everyone are forced to be together. we are at a public theme park. Everybody feels the tension as SIL more or less sits separately from the family but few know what is up. A misunderstanding happens between my parents and brother as he says they are tired and want to go home to unpack presents. My parents and I hear that as ‘we have to take care of oldest nephew since he got overwhelmed with people and would be better off having the rest of the party at home’. Though confused everyone end up driving there, brother, SIL and kids in front, but when we show up brother and SIL look shocked and pissed at our arrival and getting the hint everyone leaves.

Two weeks later my brother calls me to what in hindsight feels like a rallying call against our parents. At this point he’s been out of loop with my life since a bit before I got depressed so I am absolutely thrilled to talk – to catch y’all up I’m now early 20s, recently moved out with my wife of half a year and still depressed and rather dependent on my parents for support to navigate the psychiatric system and get the help I need. We open up about various issues and he talks about mom – most of which I confirm or recognise because I’m not blind and I know my mother has issues and flaws like any human, and most of it was at the time correct to a less extreme degree. I told him I would do everything in my power to help and support him. I don’t remember if this was before or after brother had a conversation with my parents, but it was within a week of it.

At this conversation, my brother relays their full perspective for the first time, which shocks my parents. This includes details of how they view mom, that nephews can’t visit anymore, and that only dad can see them. My parents were frozen in the moment, which was not the remorse and confessions my brother expected, hurting him again. It’s all presented as SIL having the problem, not him. Dad and brother talk again a week or two later over the phone, and here it’s established that there will be no grandkids before my mother also gets a diagnosis.

My mother DOES think she has at least a hint of autism, but after 50+ years of living a functional professional life without it and being from an older generation she isn’t comfortable putting the label on her. Instead she wants to go to counseling together, which my brother refuses.

I put myself in the spot of mediator because I’m that kind of person as these are three of the four pillars in my life shaking my foundation. They talk a little bit over phone but mostly through email, and the misunderstandings are constant and many. By February it’s shifted from SIL to brother having the issues. I listen to both sides, my brother mostly over the phone and my parents when I see them, but parents also call after particularly painful email exchanges. Brother constantly feels he gets progress with dad which is then lost while him and mom is in full deadlock, leaving him frustrated an in pain. He has talked with our sisters, but neither are even vaguely able to see where he’s coming from and the mother he sees – it’s the same woman who’ll drive across the (European) country to clean up your whole apartment and bring three meals for the freezer because they broke up with a bf or burned out on studying. All the while mom yearns to see her grandkids and has no clue how to reconcile with her son while denying herself the right to feel hurt by the accusations, feeling like everything she does is perceived opposite. I try to translate their sentiments from one party to the other and revealing the amount of vulnerability on either side I feel comfortable sharing without compromising their trust in me.

All this is a blur to me due to the stress and the fact that my wife was severely mentally ill at the time, so I can’t give many details. All I know is me from 2015 did the very best to get them to work together while also validating their individual feelings.

After half a futile year my brother make another attempt to involve the rest of the family by sending out a group email trying to bring up all that’s happening and shake up the expectations and perceptions we have of our parents. Oldest sister, the sweetheart, brings forth an initially very good response which prompts a call between them and they talk, which now puts oldest sister as mediator while I play support. After a day’s hesitation dad dares responding, summing up the conclusions I and oldest sister have suggested – that we needed to see more vulnerability from parents because we knew they kept such things from us but all of us were 20+ now and could handle life being shit, but that they still needed to take responsibility for a lot of actions and interactions as the uniting and ‘more powerful’ family unit. Dad got it all down well and very emotionally, and I think brother gave a neutral to positive response. Then my mom joined with her input, echoing dad’s sentiment in her own words and voicing willingness to work on this, then quoted a – to me – innocuous quote from one of their previous email exchanges as a response as well. While I could feel her honest sentiment, I also could see multiple ways how it could be read as dismissive and unemotional.

My brother clearly saw this as an attack. I never understood exactly why. If it’s because he felt she exposed their private exchanges out of context to make him look bad or he thought her words were insincere or were a rehearsed copy of my dad or something. No matter what he got aggressive and accusatory in his words and ended up attaching every email sent in the last year. After a surprised message of oldest sister mom then responded with a – to me – distasteful but very honest mail. She said to her his response wasn’t a surprise, as this had been his reaction to any of her mediation… Oh, and btw there’s still the barbecue party for those who wants to come.

SIL calls oldest sister and explain that the messages must stop now while she can hear brother sobbing loudly in the background, which oldest sister passes on into the mail thread. I send him a mail telling him I’m sorry for how things progressed and that I love him deeply and will do so forever. He says he’s not angry with me, he loves me very much too, but he just really need a break. I tell him to contact me whenever he might want or need.

At summer vacation brother says he will only talk to mother again if she accepts going to family counseling with my dad and her to figure out their parenting. I’m rather convinced he expected to show up there and be berated for everything bad they did to him. They go three times and instead they are told to protect and support themselves and eachother, to develop and enforce boundaries with their children, to make a united front, and to tell him they always have the door open if he ever gets ready to talk in person.

Parents tell brother that dad can no longer see nephews without mom as it strains their relationship, that they love him and truly want to make things work, and that they are ready to talk when he’s willing but the emailing stops now. Brother then cuts contact with parents

Two months later he messages me that SIL is removing everyone from Facebook but I shouldn’t take it personally. I tell him that he should do whatever is needed to heal and I want nothing but for them to be happy. Part of me starts wondering if this will be it.

December 23rd my brother calls me up to tell me he won’t see me anymore. I tell him to do what he needs to do to protect himself and get better. I’ll always be there for him to come back.

… I then also spent that Christmas, my first ever away from the family, crying any moment I wasn’t in the same room as my in-laws, cause I am a lil bit of my mom’s child after all.

On the other hand, my family transformed gradually but surely since. They learned that family isn’t a given but can be lost in many ways, so it shouldn’t be taken for granted. My wife, with all her emotions and affection and sensitivity which is foreign to our house, taught my parents to hug again and it spread to all their remaining kids. They learned to tell us when they were stressed or money was tight or they’d gotten sick, which let us bond over shared vulnerability. They learned, through me and wife, to tell us and eachother that they are loved. We talk freely about emotions now, about what happened then and what’s painful now and how mental health isn’t taboo. We talk about brother with great pain still from time to time, but keep helping each other evolving and processing our perspectives. And while it’s still a struggle, especially oldest sister puts immense effort into including me in the conversation if she notices me being left out or struggling to get a word in… So, ykno, there was a lot to fix with patience and all. He was just in too much pain to join at the time.