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None of us noticed, to the point where I’d say, “What birthmark?” when someone unexpectedly mentioned it. There were a lot more important things about my brother than that birthmark, things people of course at first meeting would not know, maybe would never know.
The loss of his eyebrows made all his history, even the birthmark, disappear; he was featureless, disap- pearing into the crowd.
On this night, the night I noticed his lack of eyebrows, I was his booby prize date to see Fine Young Can- nibals at Jones Beach. He couldn’t get anyone else to go and told me this outright. No hard feelings. This was Donny, my coolest brother, the one I wanted
to impress. I was thrilled, although I am sure our conversation was stilted. It was the first time I’d seen him out after his chemotherapy treatments. He treated me to dinner at Sidekicks, the fancy-to-me restaurant on Broadway near the college all seven of us attended. I told him my college drinking stories over mozzarella sticks.
“Same play, different actors,” Donny always said in response to my stories.
This was his first bout (there would be three) with cancer. He was more prickly then, feisty, pissed. He hadn’t married yet, had kids.
Bald, eyelashless, I didn’t recognize him that night. We stood in the crowd at the arena. I went to the bathroom and when I came out, my brother stood in front of me and I had no idea who he was. I couldn’t pick him out of the crowd.
“Mag!” He shouted at me, a little angry, almost like he was waking me up. Annoyed, like this had happened to him before.
“Oh! Sorry!” I said. He just shrugged. We both pre- tended nothing happened, but it happened again at the end of the concert. Same deal—bathroom, crowd, no recognition, anger, annoyance, denial. On the way home, as he drove me back to my dorm in his red jeep, we sat in silence.
~
Mom and Dad, 2015
There’s not a lot that you can say that’s right when trying to tell your parents their son is dying.
There was the ticking clock, the round table where he
loved to sit, drinking coffee, eating toast, pitching one-liners. Now he wasn’t here. He was in New Jersey, dying. There was nothing I could say to my parents that they would accept. They always switched into hope-mode. What parents readily give up on the life of their child? Especially Donny’s life, a life they’d been fighting and hoping for for years.
“Mom, they are out of things to try. They are just do- ing an immunotherapy drug as a last-ditch effort,
but they know it won’t work.” The ticking clock. The round table. The empty chair. A creak out of nowhere.
My mother’s face was resolute. Her hands were busy cleaning plates.
“Well, we just have to believe it will work.” With that,
I walked out of the room in frustration. I wanted to prepare them, to help Donny by telling them, but after several attempts it seemed futile.
“Leave it to Donny to tell them, to explain,” my sister Bubsi had advised.
But he didn’t tell them. When he was told himself his first words to his wife were, “What will I tell Mom and Dad?” As though there must be a way to spin it, a verbal exit.
Rule #1: Do not tell your parents you are dying. The rest of us didn’t need to be told. We knew enough by now to know stage 4 lung cancer=death. All I had to see was a photo of my emaciated brother, with that look, that impending death look I had seen before on strangers, and the truth was crystal clear.
That day, Dad followed me out of the kitchen, down the long hall to the den. Where was I going? I didn’t know. I turned to see my father’s sagging shoulders behind me, his pleading eyes.
“Dad, we have to somehow face this,” I said, covering my face with my hands, sobbing. Dad’s arms en- circled me, comforting his 46-year-old youngest child, something parents always know how to do. Certainly easier than saying goodbye.
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