Everyone experiences loss to varying degrees throughout their lives, right? From pets to loved ones that which is truly cherished is destined to pass one day. It's natural, right?
Nearly a year has gone by and what everyone promised me has yet to come to pass. It isn't any easier. Sure the sun still shines. Yes I have my successes and failures as they come. I have my times of laughter. Share my moments of bliss with those who shuffle along with me. Yet none of this dims the moment that is fast approaching. Halloween, All Hallows Eve, That-Night-Where-Everyone-Gets-Freaky, whatever you want to call it, looms on the forefront of my mind more now that October has come. Why is this such a painful event now? Perhaps I need to reverse the thought process to last year.
October marks perhaps the hardest and worst month that my family has ever endured. It began with the hospitalization of my older brother. For the past fifteen years illness haunted his every step, his every success, his every act. The twist seemed to happen over night. One day he was a sarcastic, artistic, intelligent, capable mid-twenties lunatic. A force of nature. He was the type of person who you could not assume to comprehend. When you thought you knew what was about to happen he would change the dynamic and strike you where you least expected it. Sure he had his illnesses at that point. He was severely bi-polar. He endured Khrone's disease since he was a child. And then his body began to simply fail him. First it was his joints. Then his back. Issues brought on from working with cinder blocks in his various works of installation art. This was followed by disease. His raging upper intestinal track began to constantly split into bleeds that would send him into the hospital for days at a time. At first. Those stays became longer and longer, the treatments became increasingly more intense. Bleeds were treated with blood transfusions. More than I can count although I'm sure others in my family kept immaculate records of each stay. It wasn't more than several years later that transfusions turned to thinners. Hospital stays grew longer. The Khrones did not remain isolated. The disease crept up into the colon and ravaged the organ until it needed to be removed. Everyone sighed a moment of relief, right? A chronic illness that hits the colon and upper G.I. tract can not cause many issues if those parts of the body cease to exist. Right?
Disease is a funny thing with a morbid sense of humor. The sight was removed by the effects echoed. Loudly. The years of illness struck his liver and crippled the filter for the body. His immune system began to shut down. Sickness came at every turn. He went out for a show and got a cold that wrapped him tight for a month. He went to the art museum, to the theater, to the park, to the aquarium, to graduate classes, and he returned home sick once more. Then his hospital stays began to turn into gambles. He'd go in for surgery and be bed ridden for weeks being pumped with antibiotics that were closer to nuclear poison than medicine to strike down resistant infections that seemingly are only found in hospital halls. This leads us up to a year ago.
Living in Chicago with his fiancé he struggled through each day on a liver transplant list out of Loyola Hospital. He had been in and out of this hospital frequently ever since he moved away from Cleveland and the Cleveland Clinic. Only last October he would take his final trip in. His body was ravaged. He was weak, he was thin, he couldn't eat, he couldn't drink, he couldn't even think clearly enough to read through his collection of graphic novels or his library of literary works. He was too weak to produce the artwork that had gained him notice from east to west coast. Three resistant infections were dancing about inside of him completely unrestrained. His liver was all but dead tissue wasting away inside of him. He had no immune system. For weeks he fought. He laid nearly crippled in the hospital bed, unable to stay awake for more than fifteen minutes at a time. The doctors pumped him full of the strongest medications they could find. The kind of substance that should make you glow in the dark. It attacked the infections, yes, but it also waged war on his kidneys. The one organ system in his body that had remained in perfect form. He wasted away before our eyes. I saw him at this point. I sat by his side and tried to remain strong. I stayed as long as I could before I had to return to Cleveland for graduate course-work, it was dream for me after-all. To find some form of success in my lifetime that I could be proud of. And he never failed to lavish that pride onto me when such was appropriate. My last words were, "You fight for me, I'll four point for you." We both held up our ends of the deal.
Three days later he died.
Massive systemic organ failure. As I understand it on October 31st just before midnight his fiancé gave permission to have his I.V. flooded with pain-killers. He was in so much pain. He needed to rest. His iPod was set up on the speaker system in the ICU. The music from his Library of Congress sized collection was played for him. I hope it eased the moment. By one or two in the morning on October 31st he passed. Quietly. In his sleep. I still recall my mother's reaction as it was told to me. She walked in and couldn't believe it. She was convinced that he playing a Halloween prank. The room dark. The bedside light keeping him illuminated beneath it. She wanted him to spring up and scare her, to laugh. To smile in his goofy fashion and wash the room with pride that he could still make people jump even if he could not physically bring himself to do it. But that wasn't the reality. November brought his memorial that was loving referred to as his multi-media extravaganza. It wasn't a funeral, it was an showing. We turned a funeral home into an art gallery for the day. Hundreds of people arrived. For someone who was convinced he was unloved in life he pulled near celebrity levels of attention from all the people he touched. I still can not hold in my emotions when I think of that. That he never knew how important he was to the people in his life.
I'm not sure why I'm writing this. No one here knows me. There are perhaps some on this site who knew my brother but I'm being very cautious not to give out his name. Perhaps this is meant to be cathartic to me. Perhaps I'm trying to work through a wound, a dolorous stroke that has left my kingdom crippled. Perhaps I just want people to know.
I do not know how many people will read this. Many or none. It matters not to me anymore. But this has to be made clear. If you find yourself sitting here reading this I want you to pull out your driver's license. I want you to look at it, examine it. Look to see if it carries the symbol marking you as a tissue and organ donor. Did you find it? Do you see it? If so, thank you. Thank you for being a person who cares enough to allow for people like my brother not to die from what today is a relatively easy fix. Provided there are enough donors. If you do not see it, if you know you specifically did not check the simple box, I have to ask why? It would have only taken a moment. The major religions present in this country all support the act of organ donation. To quote the title of a staged production, "You can't take it with you." I implore you, I plead, I beg, I weep for you to go to the DMV and fill that form out again. Is that time consuming? Yes. Is it aggravating to deal with such lines and such people? Yes. But there will come a day when you might be the one to save lives. A day where you will continue to live through the life of another. Through the life of someone like my brother.