Mom tells me Barry is suffering acute pain in his abdomen. My sister-in-law, Penny, takes him to the ER. There is no diagnosis.
Weeks later I ask Mom, “How’s Barry?”
“He still has pain. It’s worse lying down, so he often sleeps sitting up. It could be Irritable Bowel Syndrome.”
A year passes. Many tests. No diagnosis. Nothing improves. The doctors are stingy with narcotic painkillers, the only kind that are effective. I have a nagging worry that I try to ignore.
Finally a shocking diagnosis: pancreatic cancer, inoperable. This can’t be possible—things like this don’t happen in our family. Oh, but they do, and this is just the beginning.
I start to read an online Mayo Clinic description of the progression of symptoms as the disease ravages the body. I jump up, pacing to escape the gruesomeness. I do not want to know more. I hit delete.
Barry is entered in a clinical trial that nearly kills him. After months of conventional chemotherapy he improves a little.
Barry and I have a long phone conversation. He is both philosophical and hopeful, having already outlived the six-month prognosis for most with pancreatic cancer. It has been a year and a half since the symptomatic pain began. He tells me how much he has enjoyed his life. His family.
I stare out my window at impossibly green leaves, trees perfectly etched against their sky-blue backdrop. Light and color are refracted through the prism of impending death. Time has slowed. The natural world appears painfully exquisite; fractal geometries repeat into infinity.
Our extended family gathers for a reunion at our parents’ home. It is bittersweet to be together. We take lots of pictures. I favor one of Barry and me with our two younger brothers. This will be the last photo of all four of us, robust and smiling. We never say out loud that Barry won’t recover, but we know.
A few weeks later Barry calls. He is in tears. He tells me a car struck our parents as they walked across a street. The brutal shock of their sudden deaths transforms us to automatons. Everything we do in settling our parents’ affairs is colored by the fact that Barry is dying, but we do not acknowledge it. We divide among us our parents’ possessions— valuable or sentimental— without regard to who will survive.
The family gathers again for the memorial service. Barry and I both give eulogies, his following mine. I remember thinking, “I wish I’d said that,” but I don’t remember what he said. I wish I did.
I make regular cross-country trips to visit Barry. We enjoy our time together. Sometimes we sit in silence. Once, when we are both awake in the middle of the night, he tells me he often sits, waiting, through those quietest hours. He rarely complains.
We escape into extraordinarily long movies. Lagaan, at 3 hours and 45 minutes, is my favorite. It takes place in India and features cricket matches and a heart-warming story of survival against the odds.
Over time it becomes more painful to see Barry struggle. An implanted morphine pump finally controls his dosage.
It’s now a year since our parents died. Every time I see Barry I convince myself this is not yet our last visit. I expect to be there when he takes his final leave. At the end of one visit I hug his skeletal body and feel an undercurrent of uncertainty, an extra sadness we both try to ignore.
A few weeks later Penny calls. It is 10 o’ clockon a Tuesday morning. The hospice nurse is with her. Barry can no longer speak, but he is still listening. Penny puts the phone by his ear for me to say good-bye. I have never prepared myself for this. Somehow I manage to blurt out, “Oh, Barry. You are so good. You have shown me how to face death. I love you.” It feels both awkward and inadequate.
Penny calls our younger brothers so each can say his final good-bye. We don’t know what he heard. He is gone, released. We, too, experience a form of release.
One year later I collapse, suffocating under the weight of the holiday season. My wildly beating heart feels literally broken. The thought of Christmas dinner clenches my stomach into a lump of coal, my limbs are stuck in molasses. The view of exquisite beauty once seen through the prism of impending death has been obliterated. I seek medical attention and am given pills for anxiety and depression. They render me numb, and I gradually realize I am no longer able to cry. I reach a stasis, an equilibrium firmly balanced in mid-range emotions, grateful that extreme emotions are medicated away. It is three years before I am willing to feel alive again and stop all medications.
Many years have now passed. I experience all of my emotions. I am pleased to cry in a movie or at the end of a good book. I am no longer frightened by the depth of my grief. I revel in the amplitude of happy memories, seen through a prism permanently cracked by loss, grateful for those I have loved.
Author's Comment
When a writing workshop prompt encouraged writing about a photograph, I started with a familiar old photo of my brother and me, not knowing where it would lead. I didn’t expect to write about the end of my brother’s life, but that is what happened. The visual prompt and the writing exercise have intertwined to make permanent some precious memories.
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Dorian Kingman Chong writes creative nonfiction, focusing on personal essays. Her work has appeared in