As the granddaughter of a cancer surgeon, I’ve heard many stories about her terminal patients – mostly about their regrets in their final hours of life. One story that really stood out came from a coal miner. I heard that when he was less than an hour from death, he was sobbing, but not for fear of death or the pain of the cancer in his chest. He was distraught because he had spent all those hours in the mines, away from his wife and children, in an attempt to support them. When he finally accomplished his goal, he was dying. According to my grandmother, the last thing he said to her was this advice: “Do me a favor. Don’t work long hours. Spend them with your family and children instead.” He’s not the first to come up with those words of wisdom. Most anyone will tell you this, if you let them ramble long enough. However, does anyone act on this advice? Sadly, most of us need to endure a traumatizing ordeal before we realize what our priorities should be. Unfortunately, tragedy is how I learned about my true priorities.

Although I was only 11, I will never forget the look on my grandma’s face when she saw the difference in my brother Tony’s arms. His left arm looked the same, but his right was different. His handwriting, once considered neat for a second-grader, had become a sea of illegible lines, dashes, and shapes. Seeing Grandma’s face, I knew that Tony’s rogue right arm was a symptom of something sinister and malicious.

Around 1 a.m. on a rainy October morning, I was awoken by my father shouting, “Get up! We’re going to the emergency room.” Once there, I fell asleep in one of those uncomfortable hospital beds, only to be shaken awake hours later by my grandma. When my confusion cleared, I noticed her tears and knew that something terrible must have happened.
My grandma never cries. In fact, she’s one of the strongest people I know. My grandmama’s had a hard life. She was widowed at 45, due to my grandpapa’s cigarette habit, and spent years toiling in China’s rice paddies. To top that off, no matter how hard she worked in the paddies, she couldn’t stop her eldest son from dying. She simply couldn’t provide the nutrition that a growing boy needed on a meager farmer’s salary.

So if Grandma was crying, something genuinely terrible must have occurred. Unfortunately, I was right.
When I heard the words, “He has Stage IV brain cancer, and there’s nothing we can do,” reality really hit home. Not a single person’s eyes were dry. Even the “tough dudes” of the family were breaking down. My little brother Tony was dying, and there was nothing that we or medical science could do to save him.

I didn’t know what to do. Tony and I had been thick as thieves since the beginning of time. Before his birth, my preschool classmates told me that my life would be hell upon the baby’s arrival. They complained about their brothers being the most annoying creatures on Earth and lauded them with first place awards for “crying, sleeping, and being little devils.”

I lucked out, because Tony was the complete opposite of my friends’ descriptions of their brothers. Even as we grew up, the phrase “sibling rivalry” never existed in either of our dictionaries, and we couldn’t relate to siblings who didn’t enjoy each other’s company. Tony and I endured everything together – whether it was the brutality of the butterfly stroke at swim practice, art lessons, or low test scores. We even gossiped way past our bedtimes about the crazy adults in our lives.

When his life expectancy was announced (six to seven months), I felt like kicking myself in the head. I began to question why I spent so much time on studying, swimming, and piano. Assuming that he even survived seven months, that didn’t give us enough time. If he didn’t have a great chance of celebrating his ninth birthday, who was going to help me survive the remainder of middle school, let alone the insanity of high school? Most importantly, who was going to give the nonjudgmental support that the adults in my life refused to provide?

I don’t know how I did it, but after crying for what seemed like forever, I somehow got a grip and told myself that if we couldn’t spend the rest of our childhood together, I would at least cherish the time we had.

After all, since Tony had made the early years of my life a lot easier, the least I could do was try to make the last months of his life as great as possible, whether it was talking about trivial topics or just sharing a good book.

Although I’m grateful for the final seven months we had together, they definitely weren’t enough. I would love to say that I spent Tony’s last hours with him, but I was not given that chance. Two hours after I was forced to go to bed, he passed away peacefully in my mama’s arms.

When I was shaken awake by Mother Nature’s sobs, I knew that my brother had left this world for a better one. Once I saw his lifeless body, I thought my heart would shatter. I had contemplated what I would do after he died. Who would I talk to about life? Who would save me from those nasty parental lectures?

As I reflect upon the experience, I’m not entirely distraught for myself. I’m instead depressed over the fact that the world lost a budding artist/engineer and a great individual. Of course, I’m sad for myself occasionally. Why didn’t I take a break from my rigorous chorus schedule to spend more time with him? When Tony was alive, I never thought there was anything mysterious about him, but now I realize how much of a mystery he was to me. We may have been extremely close, but there was so much about him I didn’t know.
Two weeks before he died, Tony awoke from a morphine-induced slumber and said his last coherent words: “I really like the color yellow. I just saw it.”

Those words will haunt me forever. Where did he see the color yellow, and why did I never take the time to figure out what made yellow so pretty? To this day, I don’t have a clue where he saw that magnificent shade of yellow. I suppose I’ll find out when I’m reunited with him