*Content warning: cancer, grief, a very personal account of someone’s last days alive*
This Sunday, October 3rd at 3:33 pm, my only brother, Billy, took his last breaths. He was 30.
In April of last year, when the rest of the world was waking up to COVID, Billy was being rushed to the hospital with intense stomach pains. His colon was completely twisted and after an emergency surgery, it was discovered he had stage III colon cancer. With immense positivity and determination to live, Billy valiantly fought the cancer with more surgeries and chemo. We thought he had beat it. We were wrong.
On my second day of an isolated art residency in Portugal this summer, I learned Billy’s condition has progressed to include a rare secondary cancer and that he had three months to live. Without my loved ones around to hold, I planned on returning home to spend time with family. But they all encouraged me to stay on my trip. When I asked my brother how I could support him from afar, he earnestly replied “Have a good life. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” He always did put others before himself.
I spent the next 45 days creating songs, videos, and a feature-length play, all inspired by my brother and the multitudes of feelings I was experiencing, many for the first time. One thing they don’t always tell you about grief is that the stages are cyclical, not progressive. And so one day, I would be in a content place of acceptance and forgiveness, and the next, a dark depression with periods of bargaining and denial sprinkled in.
While on the second leg of my residency journey in Iceland, I would receive updates from my mom via text and talk to my brother when he’d have energy and our 7-hour time difference aligned. At the start of my trip, I was convinced that I’d be able to finish my travels and be back home to see him, but after a couple big scares, that future seemed less and less likely. I mourned his death from afar, waking up from mostly sleepless nights certain that I would see a text or missed call from my mom, letting me know Billy had gone.
As my trip was coming to a close last week, Billy had managed to find a stable place, despite all of the tubes and invasive machinery keeping him alive. He had been in the ICU since our mom’s birthday on August 26th (over a month), and was being transferred home for hospice care. Even with his grim prognosis, he was still determined to fight the cancer and held onto his 1% chance of survival until the very end. He really didn’t want to die.
On Friday, I arrived home from Europe and got to spend the last 48 hours of my brother’s life with him. It was nothing short of a miracle that I was granted this time and I know how important it was for both of us to leave off on a good note. It’s no secret to our family that we fought for most of our childhoods and carried a lot of animosity into our adult lives. We were less than 2 years apart in age, but worlds apart in personality. The last time we had seen each other ended in a pointless fight and while I didn’t realize it at the time, our heated hug goodbye that day would be our last.
On Saturday, the last full day Billy lived, I was lying next to him in bed, rubbing CBD balm on his back, when he told me “Anything you’ve ever done..I forgive you.” “I forgive you too, Billy,” I said, fighting back tears. Seconds later, he received a phone call from the lab at the hospital, telling him that his potassium levels were alarmingly high and he might go into cardiac arrest at any moment. They wanted him to go back to the ER for tests. Calmly, he called an ambulance to come get him, and within minutes, he was whisked away.
At the hospital, they let him know that his kidneys were shutting down, and that he could stay there or go back home and die. He returned home that night. The next day, as I rubbed his icy feet, my mom went out to get him a power-reclining, heat/massage chair, since the bed he was spending all his time on required a lot of pillow shifting and people helping him to sit up. The pain in his lower back was getting worse, so he called the massage therapist who had been working on him all week to come back. “Please God, give me strength to enjoy this time with my family,” he whispered with hands clasped.
Within about an hour of being in his chair, he began to feel nauseous. My mom and Maria (his girlfriend) brought a bucket for him to throw up in, but he wasn’t able to produce anything. I asked him “What can we do for you, Billy?” “I don’t know what I need right now,” he nervously replied. Those would be his last words. As he struggled for breath, we put an oxygen mask on him and told him how much we loved him. After his breathing stopped, we kept talking to him. I FaceTimed our older sister and our dad to say their goodbyes. They say hearing is one of the last things to go.
My mom ran out of the room and came back with a small jewelry case. “Billy asked me to hold onto this for you,” she said to Maria, pulling out an engagement ring. Maria was the first person my brother met who he wanted to spend his life with, after several tumultuous relationships with abusive women. Tragically, he and Maria met too late, after he was already very sick. But in a dark, poetic way, he did get to spend the rest of his life with her. During this painfully beautiful ring exchange, I put my hand on Billy’s heart. It was the only part of his body that was still warm.
My brother leaves behind a 5 year-old son, Joseph, who he was a loving single father to until the very end. Now in my mom and her partner’s care, Joseph is an opportunity for us all to continue to love and care for my brother. He looks exactly like Billy did when we were kids and it will be incredibly bittersweet to watch him grow up to look and act like his father. I’ve been working on establishing myself as “the cool aunt” and am excited for all the fun we’ll get to have over the years.
I don’t think there will ever be a time that we’ll “get over” the loss of a sibling, a son, a father, especially one as caring as my brother. But I hope that the pain that comes from the tragedy of such a beautiful life cut short will provide fuel in all of us to continue to love each other, to create, to be more patient and understanding with each other, as we continue to live out our limited time on Earth.
“There’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow if you work for it.” - William Joseph MacBride IV (11/5/90 - 10/3/21)