Maybe it’s because I have two brothers and two sisters myself. I’m the fourth of five. I know how it feels to be younger and so need and love the attention of the older. I also know how it feels (though it’s a vague memory) to have the family dynamics change as another member enters. I was only three when my sister was born, so I hadn’t had that much time, all considered, to get used to my place as “the baby.” Still, it was a shift. But what came most out of it was pure, absolute, incredible love for my younger sister. Our bond is something unlike any other in my life, and that can be said for the unique relationships I have with each of my siblings.

We got a little less of some things. Certainly monetarily, my parents had to struggle to pay for everything times five. Still, I wouldn’t trade any bit of the love we shared for anything. And I can say, at 23, my siblings (from 30 with her own kids, to 20 and still in college) are still my very best friends.

Thanks for posting about so many aspects of your life and your family, but especially for showing the tender, beautiful, sometimes complicated relationship between your children. In every obstacle they face throughout life, that relationship will give them strength. Of course, having such a loving, amazing Baba will not hurt.

Heavy heavy sigh.

And I’m just his Auntie. (“Just.” He’s just the first baby in my family I held and diapered; flew across the Atlantic to do so; the kid born to two people who’d just lost their mothers in the past year; just the first of the next generation, to try to fill the hole of loss.)

I have only been able to write about him in bits and pieces, and always gingerly trying not to bolt too far into literal narrative, out of respect for my sister’s privacy.

In brief: he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma multiforme (a virulent, essential “death sentence” brain/spinal cord cancer) a few months after his ninth birthday. We fought like hell for nine months, which felt essentially like a steep, fast, bus ride into the center of hell; no brakes, no seatbelts, no map, no padding. Just each other.

His life and death have changed the lives of all of us who were witness to both, and on a regular basis I thank him (like here, or here or here) for giving me the clarity of vision I feel I have now as a parent. Dadgum it, it will not be wasted on me. Or so I feel as frequently as I possibly can.

You write about him – his lingering presence – so beautifully. And there is no way to make sense of the death of a child. This much I have learned.

You’ve got a couple of gorgeous little miracles there – and another miracle, of course, is realizing it -which you absolutely do. Peace to you.

-SJ

Virtual hug gladly received, bosssanders. And you know, some kind of peace is already accessible, even now, even to my sister. Other kinds, especially for her and her husband and her son, probably not ever. But our mindful, grateful, loving living seems like the best way we can honor all the dead, whether they’e young or old, taken by cancer or chance or violence. Least that’s the only thing I’ve been able to mine out of all this.

Which of course is easier said than done.

And Mr Lady, your speechlessness is an honor. Your speech, too, for that matter. Thank you.