Mental Meanderings

Gaelon Peter Price 1976 - 2003

It was strange how quiet the house had become in recent weeks. My sister and I sat on the living room chair, close to each other, talking of times long past. Everyone spoke in whispers as if afraid to disturb sleep and yet the bright sunshine outside the window and the beautiful clear sky belied the hour.

Our mother was with the nurse in his room. Watching him, sharing a prayer with each other and asking the lords favor. I'd already spent an hour alone with him earlier, crying a little, rocking in the comfortable recliner or being still, pausing my own breath long enough to be sure he still did. His breath was so shallow and he didn't move. Morphine-induced coma to ease his final days.

I wept watching him, talking a little and wondering if he could hear me remember the happy times we'd had together. I looked around his room. We'd spent so much time in this one and the ones before it. I regretted in that moment not having spend more of his last year with him but I'd grown and begun a family of my own. A part of me felt selfish for having the joy of a life that knew romantic love and children of my own when his never would. Then I remembered the smiles my children brought to his face and the joy he had in my joy.

He room was exactly as it had always been. As if only that morning he'd be sitting in his favorite chair playing games on the Playstation with the fan blowing. All his things were away neatly as he'd always put them; orderly, organized.

I talked to him about the times I remembered and cherished the most. Riding our bikes in the deep mud puddles while it rained. Going on long trips as if we could venture the world with only our day clothes on our backs, a good pair of shoes and the peddles beneath our feet. To those who hadn't seen him live his life would have appeared a cage and yet I'd seen his freedom and his love of simple things.

The sun had never been his friend but he'd ventured under it knowing that in a way he might have made his life shorter in doing so. He knew a longer life was not better than a full life. I watched people turn away, whisper behind his back, jaws-droped in horror at his disfigured face. As a child I couldn't understand why they didn't see the boy I saw. I hero worshipped him and he was always beautiful to me. They didn't see the agony he endured either, or the temper that came from frustration with all he couldn't do.

I shared memories of games we'd played together. I'd read to him when his eyesight or impaired learning had prevented him from reading on his own. We shared tastes in music and movies, not because I had already loved those things but because in sharing his love of them I grew to understand and appreciate them myself.

We'd enjoyed memories in the sunshine and as many, perhaps more after dark. In the darkness nothing could stop him. The danger of the sunlight had passed and the night was his time. Raised to rejoice in the darkness after sunset I didn't feel we had a dimmer world. He was the sun. Bringing light into games out of doors and in. Torches in the backyard, dancing in the street when it was quiet and the only illumination were the irregular streetlights.

Walking in the chilly winter mornings as if it were the middle of a summer day. The brisk air invigorated us and we'd wander for blocks, knowing the streets were safe, they were our streets, we knew every way and back alley. We knew that in the spring the creek would fill with tadpoles (much to the disapproval of our parents when we'd brought home a hundred or so and they made themselves comfortable in the fishpond outside their window).

He knew everything, at least I believed he did in my years younger idolization of him. He knew bikes and skateboards, darts and pool. He was a master of computers when computers were new and my mother thought her typewriter was all the rage. He won awards for ten-pin bowling until his hands had grown thin with skin grafts and he could no longer comfortably hold the ball. He rode his motorbike fearlessly and on the few occasions he fell off, miles from home, he'd get back up, gaping wounds and all and push the bike all the way home.

That morning I sat remember things with my sister in the quiet house that felt like life had already drained. I listened to the gentle murmur of voices in the next room and the silence when all voices fell silent. We cried together for what seemed hours after and we laughed and she smiled at a life lived to he very core of living. Understanding the blessing in having known him, having had the opportunity to share so many gifted years with him when every day of the last twenty were meant to be his last.

We grieved together, each feeling lost in our own ways and none understanding exactly what this loss meant to the others. I'd lost a brother, my best friend and that was what he was to only me. He still lay silent in his bed, where he'd slept so many nights, and when we saw him after it I couldn't help but pause, waiting to see him breathe. He didn't breathe again.

***

I don't know why this came up again today. I've been thinking about it all afternoon and knew I wanted to put it in my blog tonight. I remember having written about my brothers final moments once before but right now I can't find it. *frowns* It would be interesting to compare the two. Anyway, the above is about my brother who was born with a condition called Xeroderma Pigmentosum Syndrome. Basically it means that his skin couldn't deal with sunlight the way it's supposed to so he burnt every time he came in contact with ultraviolet light. This lead to skin cancer, which eventually killed him. He was diagnosed at age two and given a life expectancy of five years, he lived to see his twenty-seventh birthday. *smiles* My brother, one of love's miracles.