In Memoriam (MAB)

Wednesday morning at 8:00 I was called into the counselor’s office.  “You need to call home”, Ms. G told me.  I knew immediately why.  It was a call I’d anticipated having to make for months.  It was a call no one ever wants to make especially from in here.

My brother, my only sibling, passed away at 5:50 am in the Duke University Hospital Oncology wing.  My Mom and Dad were with him as he took his last breath.  He would have been 49 this November.  He leaves a wife and two daughters.

Mark did not have an easy life and he was not an easy person to get along with.  For much of our life growing up he lived in my shadow.  School came easily for me; I made friends.  Mark had learning disabilities and a caustic personality that rubbed people the wrong way.  And, bullying isn’t some modern phenomena.  Kids were cruel in the 60’s and 70’s and Mark was always the kid that got picked on.

I didn’t let people pick on Mark, but I was, honestly, embarrassed by him.  And I was a lousy brother.  He deserved more from me.  That he and I weren’t close, that for much of his life he resented me was no great surprise.  He didn’t know what I was going through.  He just saw his older brother, successful in school, successful in a law career, married to a beautiful woman and thought “this guy gets all the breaks”. 

And Mark and I grew further apart.  There were horrible fights.  He brought out a side of me I didn’t know existed, a rage and a disgust that made me look at myself in the mirror.

Mark was diagnosed with cancer years ago.  My initial reaction?  Of course he was.  After all, he had tried every religion, every lifestyle, done anything he could to fit in, why would sickness surprise me?  Around that time, my own life was coming apart.  I was completely over my head with embezzling money and knew I couldn’t get out; my wife was further from me than I could ever remember, absorbed in her career and being supermom while I knew I was just a check, just a guy put in place to complete her life.

I read Lance Armstrong’s book about his battle with cancer and learned even mean, negative people can overcome the disease and I thought damn, Mark’s not that unique. My wife told me to make peace with him.  “You’ll regret it if something happens and you hadn’t”, she told me as he underwent a stem cell replacement.

I listened to her and went to Durham.  He was the same old Mark; bitter, demanding and negative.  And, I’m not sure why, but when I got ready to leave I leaned over, kissed his forehead and told him I loved him.

Years ago my mother came across a book she asked me to read.  “Brother to a Dragonfly” by Will D. Campbell.  She told me it would help explain the difficult relationship I was having with Mark.  I was too arrogant and headstrong to read it.  I didn’t need someone explaining to me how frustrated I was over my brother.  While at the jail, going through daily crises like divorce, stories in the paper about me, and my kids and friends turning their backs on me, I found an excerpt from the book.  And, it did explain a lot. 

Last year I was sitting here one weekend when my brother drove up on his Harley.  The sound from his bike stopped inmates in their tracks.  “You know that guy Larry?”  “Yeah”, I told the guys, impressed and awestruck that I’d know a Harley owner.  “That’s my brother”.

We spent almost four hours together that day just talking.  Before then, I don’t think he ever understood my situation.  I know I didn’t completely understand his.  After that we exchanged a few letters.  He always said “I’ll be back up”.  About three months ago Mark was hospitalized.  The cancer was spreading and his liver was shutting down.  He was angry, afraid, abusive at times.  I prayed a great deal about him these past weeks and months.  I knew he deserved, like everyone, some peace.  He hadn’t had much of that in his life.

I took the news in stride on Wednesday.  The guys here those “bad men” who “deserve what they’ve gotten” – huddled around me:  dozens of words of condolence, pats on the back.  It reminded me that we miss the humanity that exists in all of us.  There is a soul that flickers, even in the worst.  None of us are beyond redemption.

The night before his death my aunt sent me a picture of my brother and me.  I was perhaps 8, he 5.  We were smiling.  After I learned of his passing I prayed that God welcome him and give him the peace he so longed for.  I closed my eyes to sleep and wept because, well I loved him.  He was my only brother.