My brother was diagnosed at 41 with cancer There were times of little faith, and bracing ourselves for the worst. This was written to him, during one of those moments.
He is now in remission.

Johnny, My Brother


I’m thinking about you. I always think about you. And even though I think about you all the time, I feel like I don’t know the you that you are, right now. Who is this John, all grown up, and battling this disease. Are you scared?

I try to think if I ever saw you scared. I remember you hurt, there’s no way your sensitive soul could have made it through unscathed. I’ve seen you angry, felt your anger. Maybe that was your fear, all puffed up.

I’m scared, but I don’t know why. I think that your being sick is part of your journey, and has purpose. We don’t stand alone, and I don’t think that this life does either. I think that the lessons we learn here, come in handy somewhere else, a somewhere I can’t even fathom.

I wonder why you don’t use words like “fight this” or “battling”, or “beat this.” A lot of people wage wars against themselves. I wonder if that’s for the benefit of those they love. I wonder if it’s an act of self love. “I will fight that which seeks to hurt me.”
I know you are tired. I know you want to be alive. I want you to be, too.

I criticize you sometimes, to my friends, “he should be doing this, or that” I guess that’s my anger, huh? I know very little, but I know for sure that the way you handled our life, the way you made it bearable, was to be right, to paint a layer of “this is who I am and it’s fine, everything is oka.” over all the horrible gaping holes of our shared history. It’s fair, Johnnie. If I ever told you it wasn’t, I was wrong. There were times when I needed you to see things the way that I did. Our journeys were so different, though. And, it’s all fair in love and war, isn’t it?

I remember a You, that no one else in the whole world ever knew. You really watched out for me. I wish our parents would have given us the gift of growing up together. We have snippets, though, don’t we? They live in me like spinning tops, not a consistent picture, no neat mile-stoned path. That’s okay. It is what it is. Was what it was.

A while ago, Pink Floyd came on the radio, and I cried and cried and cried. We deserve more days skiing together, more moments being caught off guard by a sudden laughter. We should get high together, just for the shits and giggles of it. One more game of pool, maybe that’s what heaven is; one last time doing each of the things we loved to do together, but knowing that it’s the last time. That way we do whatever it is until we are spent. Until every word is spoken, every heart thought revealed, every cell filled with the joy of knowledge that we didn’t waste a single moment. I hope our fights were all good fights, that propelled us forward. I hope our joy built us up without tearing anyone else down. I hope sleep comes easy to you. I know you are tired.