So, quick information dump.
So, I've put this off because I don't know what to say or how to say it.
Some of you know my older brother has been sick. Very sick, in fact, so sick that he went to the hospital, repeatedly, where he was handed various drugs and sent home because he cannot pay. My rant about why this is completely unacceptable is for another day, but suffice to say that if I could kill people with my brain, several medical professionals would be writhing on the ground with bleeding noses.
He has pneumonia, and they discovered after he fell and they gave him an MRI and a biopsy, that he also has, well, PML. https://health.google.com/health/ref/Progressive+multifocal+leukoencephalopathy if you want a quick overview of this. It's not operable, and since my brother has lost more than half of his body weight and has been sick for months at this point, well...I do not want to say the words. I know it is so, I know there is a chance he could linger on, but over time he will degenrate, personality will change, memories will go, and the lights will be on but my vain, beautiful, terrifyingly young older brother will be gone. Later, his body will finally entirely fail. I want to be there when I can still see me in his eyes.
Champion of playground scraps, he would walk me in my push chair when I was a tiny baby and was so sick that I could not sleep for the pain, and he would trudge in the rain and trudge in the rain until the sound calmed me and I slept. I remember the rain. I remember sitting at the top of the stairs while he played records, and my younger brother and I stomped the top stair in time and sang along. He put me on top of the fridge when I was a brat. For many years, my mother kept him away from us because she knew he was gay, and...I don't know, we were going to catch it? Then I came out and was depressed and suicidal, and he did the best he could, coming and getting me, letting me spend long evenings hanging with his friends or going to the bars so long as I lied that his age was closer to mine than it was. He was also the toned adonis, tanned and hair dyed within an inch of it's life, sometimes as long as waist length curls. I knew the color and curl were increasingly out of a bottle, but I never spoke a word of it. He snuck me into bars, palmed me drinks, and told me about how my mother had dealt with him. He showed me it could get better. He left me to do his cleanup with relationships that he tossed away, but I did it without complaint. He found love and that love passed, and I keened his pain and found wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a hesitation in his step that I found terrifying. Older brothers are supposed to be there to laugh at your audacity, to know that I found a nice girl and settled down like he told me, to tell embarassing stories about you, to drag out photos of you in an easter bonnet while we smoke in his living room, to promise sweet tea at family events if I'll come, to teach a new generation of cousins that those words are not insults and that he was a human being. He was flawed, don't doubt it, I was ignored a dozen times for some new interest, I was wounded when he found a new sister when I had been the only one, I was childishly jealous of the child he had, but I can say with no shadow of a doubt.
I can say that from the moment I opened my eyes and drew breath, he loved my very being. He did the very best he was able to by me. He did not understand what my life was, it facinated him, he was not daring or learned or wise, but he supported me whenever he could, and through prince valient hair cuts and patch jackets and blackmailing him out of hot wheels, he loved me, and for all his shallow snotty attitude and his spoiled tanthrums when things didn't go his way, I loved him.
I made a deal that I will give him back one of the purple hot wheels that I blackmailed him out of when I was a tiny child, if he is still there so I can say goodbye when I leave for Asheville on Saturday. I am forcing my poor sainted boyfriend and girlfriend to meet my family in short order. (Hopefully she'll still want to be with me after meeting my Springer episode family.)
And this won't mean anything to anybody.
Kooga looga
Bala bala
Snorty snort snort
Waka waka.
Some of you know my older brother has been sick. Very sick, in fact, so sick that he went to the hospital, repeatedly, where he was handed various drugs and sent home because he cannot pay. My rant about why this is completely unacceptable is for another day, but suffice to say that if I could kill people with my brain, several medical professionals would be writhing on the ground with bleeding noses.
He has pneumonia, and they discovered after he fell and they gave him an MRI and a biopsy, that he also has, well, PML. https://health.google.com/health/ref/Progressive+multifocal+leukoencephalopathy if you want a quick overview of this. It's not operable, and since my brother has lost more than half of his body weight and has been sick for months at this point, well...I do not want to say the words. I know it is so, I know there is a chance he could linger on, but over time he will degenrate, personality will change, memories will go, and the lights will be on but my vain, beautiful, terrifyingly young older brother will be gone. Later, his body will finally entirely fail. I want to be there when I can still see me in his eyes.
Champion of playground scraps, he would walk me in my push chair when I was a tiny baby and was so sick that I could not sleep for the pain, and he would trudge in the rain and trudge in the rain until the sound calmed me and I slept. I remember the rain. I remember sitting at the top of the stairs while he played records, and my younger brother and I stomped the top stair in time and sang along. He put me on top of the fridge when I was a brat. For many years, my mother kept him away from us because she knew he was gay, and...I don't know, we were going to catch it? Then I came out and was depressed and suicidal, and he did the best he could, coming and getting me, letting me spend long evenings hanging with his friends or going to the bars so long as I lied that his age was closer to mine than it was. He was also the toned adonis, tanned and hair dyed within an inch of it's life, sometimes as long as waist length curls. I knew the color and curl were increasingly out of a bottle, but I never spoke a word of it. He snuck me into bars, palmed me drinks, and told me about how my mother had dealt with him. He showed me it could get better. He left me to do his cleanup with relationships that he tossed away, but I did it without complaint. He found love and that love passed, and I keened his pain and found wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a hesitation in his step that I found terrifying. Older brothers are supposed to be there to laugh at your audacity, to know that I found a nice girl and settled down like he told me, to tell embarassing stories about you, to drag out photos of you in an easter bonnet while we smoke in his living room, to promise sweet tea at family events if I'll come, to teach a new generation of cousins that those words are not insults and that he was a human being. He was flawed, don't doubt it, I was ignored a dozen times for some new interest, I was wounded when he found a new sister when I had been the only one, I was childishly jealous of the child he had, but I can say with no shadow of a doubt.
I can say that from the moment I opened my eyes and drew breath, he loved my very being. He did the very best he was able to by me. He did not understand what my life was, it facinated him, he was not daring or learned or wise, but he supported me whenever he could, and through prince valient hair cuts and patch jackets and blackmailing him out of hot wheels, he loved me, and for all his shallow snotty attitude and his spoiled tanthrums when things didn't go his way, I loved him.
I made a deal that I will give him back one of the purple hot wheels that I blackmailed him out of when I was a tiny child, if he is still there so I can say goodbye when I leave for Asheville on Saturday. I am forcing my poor sainted boyfriend and girlfriend to meet my family in short order. (Hopefully she'll still want to be with me after meeting my Springer episode family.)
And this won't mean anything to anybody.
Kooga looga
Bala bala
Snorty snort snort
Waka waka.