Coming Back Into the Light

It's been a while since I've written a post.  You may remember last August I wrote about my brother's paralysis and death (cancer).  At that point, I tried to make a conscious decision to live life more fully (hence the kayak purchase). Things didn't go exactly according to plan.  I spent a lot of time in Tennessee over the next couple of months, clearing out my brother's house and selling it.  Then my father began to decline further (Parkinson's).  Long story short, he passed away at the beginning of December.  Luckily, I was able to be with him.  I drove home with pneumonia (didn't know it until chills started halfway through the drive) and spent several weeks recovering.  Then my mother decided to move into assisted living, so that turned into another four weeks spent in Tennessee.  There's still my parents' condo to sell and all the possessions to redistribute.  So all in all, the last eleven months have been a little overwhelming.

Dad and me around 1960, reprinted from a color slide

The bad days, however, are becoming fewer.  I am starting to see the light again.

Saying Good-Bye

The last two months have been very hard.  The last two weeks even harder.  On July 15, I learned that my older brother, my only sibling, had passed away at age 59.  It was not unexpected.  He had battled stage four renal cancer (metastasized to the spine) for five years.  I remember so clearly the day I found out he had cancer.  It was like someone punched me in the gut.  I went out to the hammock, sat there alone and cried.  Your sibling is you, part of you -- your first friend, your childhood ally (and sometimes enemy), the one who has known you all your life.

In early June, we stopped by my brother's farmhouse in Tennessee.  He lived alone with his dog, Walter, and saw a hospice nurse once a week.  "I don't know if I'll make it until the Fourth of July," he said as we said good-bye at the door.  Three days later, I was on my way back to Tennessee.  He had woken up paralyzed from the chest down due to growth of the tumors.  Even after he was hospitalized in the palliative care unit, he continued to make plans -- I was instructed to bring in his coffee maker, a cart to put by his sink, his laptop, sugar packets, rubber bands, you name it. I was told what to get out of his house -- "You're in charge," he said, then questioned most of my decisions and instructed me in detail via cell phone what tools to pack up and take home to my son.  The big brother until the end.

After two weeks, I came back home.  I had planned to go back to Tennessee the last week of July.  I had the completed paperwork from the veterinarian which would allow Walter to visit him at the hospital already in my car glove compartment.  Then just after midnight on July 15, I got the call.  Even though I knew it would happen, I still felt that it was sudden, unexpected.  I wandered around the house, held Walter's face in my hands and told him how sorry I was that he was now an orphan.  I paid bills, I packed a bag, and I spent the next eight hours alone in the car driving back to Tennessee.  It was the worst drive I've ever had.  As the sun came up on an absolutely gorgeous day, all I could think about was that my brother would never see another sunrise.  That he wouldn't see the beauty of the world again. Even as I thought these things, I still couldn't really believe or understand that my brother was gone.

So good-bye to my brother, my first friend, my childhood co-adventurer and fellow explorer.

On a roadside, somewhere in Germany, around 1961.