Today, 34 years ago, my brother was born! Brett wasn’t always special to me. I hated him at first. All my friends would only come over to see the new baby and I hated it. About the time he turned 1, I found that he was holding something in his hand and when I pried open his sticky fingers, I realized it was my heart. We had a special bond. I was 4 1/2 years older than he and when he wasn’t trying to mimic our brother, he was tagging after me. If I laid down on the floor to watch TV, he was right there beside me. When we went to sleep at night, if he was scared, he would sleep in my bed. He was a thumb sucker and when he did, he needed a “silky”. His “silky” was often my hair. He would lay down beside me and with one hand hold my hair and the thumb of his other hand would be in his mouth. When he was a little older, he had a fear of bears (not that we ever saw any, but there was a movie out or something that frightened him) and he wouldn’t go anywhere by himself. I would have to walk him to the bathroom and stand outside while he quickly did his business and then when he was done bring him back to wherever he was. If you ask him about all of this stuff, he will staunchly deny it, but I remember it well. Besides, that is just the macho side of him protecting the little boy that I know is inside. We are an emotional bunch our family and very close most of the time. I try to be the strong one, usually, that everyone else can lean on. Generally this works pretty well. Except when I see Brett cry. When I see him cry, I turn into a sobbing baby. I cannot stand to see him hurting. It just breaks my heart.
This brings me to the sad thing. Six years ago today, my dad died of pancreatic cancer. I think that you pretty much know the story, but I will tell you a little about it. My dad was a healthy man. He was a construction worker who was in great physical shape. His only downfall was that he smoked. His weight tended to flucuate from season to season and at this particular time he was going through a lot of stress at work. So none of us really thought anything of the fact that he was losing weight, it happened from time to time in his line of work. He also began to have back aches. He was 55, so he chalked that up to the natural aging process. Because of the back aches he started eating ibuprofen like it was candy. Then he had a stomach ache. A really bad stomach ache which he blamed on the ibuprofen. (I should say at this point, just to give you a frame of reference, my dad never complained about anything. One time he cut his stomach with a utility knife and he should have had stitches, but he just took some bandages, butterflied it back together and went back to work. Before he was a construction worker, he used to drive ambulance for a prominent hospital in our area.) Well anyway, on New Year’s Day of 2000, he couldn’t take it anymore and he asked my mom to take him to the hospital. My mom called and asked me to meet them there.
At first the ER doctor was acting like he was annoyed that we were there for something that had been going on for awhile. That was until after he examined my dad. You could tell that he knew that there was something seriously wrong. The doctor knew that I had been a nurse previously and when my mom and I came back into the exam room, he no longer spoke to them. He spoke directly to me as if he were trying to tell me in some cryptic doctor/nurse code what was wrong with my dad. Several days and many tests, xrays, ultrasounds, biopsies later, we knew that he had some type of cancer that had spread to his liver. They thought it was either pancreatic cancer with liver metasteses or it was lymphoma with same. They never did know for certain until after he died and they were able to do an autopsy.
He had several courses of chemotherapy, but they were just throwing darts at something they couldn’t see. He deteriorated rapidly. He spent most of the last 6 weeks of his life in the hospital, in fact, he was only home a few short days during that time. He developed hepatic encephalopathy, which is a fancy way of saying that he had dementia brought on by the liver not being able to work to filter the toxins and they were settling on his brain. This developed at two weeks in. Sometimes after that, we would have my dad and other times, he wasn’t really there.
I was the last person that my dad spoke to. He said, after many days of not knowing anyone, “Hi, Shelli.” A little later, he asked me to hold him. And I did. On Valentine’s day, 2000, I went to the hospital knowing that it wouldn’t be long. Everyone was there except my brother, Mark, who was on his way from South Dakota where he lived. When Brett, who had told my dad that he couldn’t die on many occasions, came into the room, my dad got very agitated and his breathing became very loud and labored. It was as if he were trying to tell Brett, “I’m fighting. I am not going anywhere.” Brett grabbed him by the shoulders and held him and told him it was okay to go. My dad relaxed. He waited several more hours. Mark never did make it in time. I, after waiting and contemplating it for several days, climbed into his hospital bed with him and in a matter of minutes he was gone. He was the first one who held me when I was born and I was the last one who held him before he died. I said goodbye.
I was fine. It was actually kind of beautiful and I was so glad that he wasn’t in pain anymore. I was fine that is until Brett came back in the room and he sobbed and sobbed like a little baby. That was my undoing. His reaction to my dad’s illness and death has always affected me more than anyone else’s. However, he is also the one that I run to when I want to feel close to my dad. He has some of his personality traits, has some of the same mannerisms, he loves a lot of the same things and he sounds just like him. If he is in the house, but I haven’t seen him yet and he says something, I will think, “Oh, Dad is here.” Then I painfully remember.
Brett, I love you. Happy birthday. I am thankful that you have stepped in to Dad’s roll a little but you will always be my baby brother. I am sorry that you have to share your happy day with such a sad anniversary.
shelliclassic.wordpress.com 